Diorama Development

As I have mentioned before, earlier this year I attempted to make a mini-photographic diorama that could fit in my 12" square lightbox for photography. I failed at this, on several occasions, and eventually gave it up as a bad job. A few weeks ago I started another attempt, this time in the medium of cat food box and polystyrene...

It's early days and some tweaking may be required, for example I may re-profile some of the raised area behind the track to lose the 'ski jump' effect behind the loco cab. I opted to try this shot using the free backscene provided by the Railway Modeller last year as a background, and it really adds some depth, although if pursued it needs to loose some of the foreground grassland and bring the trees down lower. 

One area where this version has really come out well is the colouring of the track. I had been using Halfords matt dark brown as a track colour base and getting a very heavy looking result. This time I have gone for a lot paler palette, a mist of grey primer, then a light spray of Humbrol 29 "dark" brown acrylic aerosol. Once dry the rail sides were picked out in Humbrol 160, slightly thinned. Some weathering will produce a result that really looks like dry timber sleepers and metal rails.

More soon...

Colin