Making a Scene (as usual)

Wow, it has been a long time since I dusted off this project! I had, as usual, the best of intentions of doing more dioramas but just never seemed to be able to fit them into my painting time. Recently though I had a friend hitting a big birthday and I wanted to mark the occasion properly. As usual, despite having plenty of advance warning, I only gave myself two weeks to do the whole thing!

Jack and I worked together in one of those terrible paying, low responsibility jobs you get early in your working life. You know the type, the ones that are incredibly fun if you have the right people around but suck at your soul otherwise. One of the things we bonded over was a love of Star Wars. His favourite era is the Clone Wars stuff so I knew that was the basis for my diorama.

I decided to go with Legion models rather than trying to find 3D prints to suit and that was absolutely a case of not enough time costing me a fortune. Atomic Mass Games aren’t messing with those prices! Thankfully I already had clankers but the hero box to get Anakin, Obi Wan and Rex was a very silly price. I also bought a box the Mantic Alien plants and the box for the final display. Everything else was stuff I had already.

First I cut a piece of plasticard to size to fit the inner measurement of the box. I wanted something I could work on that was sturdy but wouldn’t take up too much of the precious height in the box. I’d built the models I wanted in advance to mock up where everyone was going.

The usual XPS foam wasn’t something I had so I went with EVA craft foam sheets to vary the ground height a little. Some very old slate pieces for rock work. Cheap filler was used to smooth transitions and a healthy coat of AK terrain paste to provide the base texture and a better colour to work up from. 

The colours for the plants were dictated by the Geek Gaming Scenics base ready mix I was using. I bought it for another project but it is far more pink in person than their website so it got put aside. I think I would have found painting them glued to the base more of a hassle if I had had time to do a better detailed paint job but for what I needed, it was fine. The models got painted separately and pinned to the base at the very end. 

The final piece is pretty good though, being me, I see mostly just flaws! I had to keep reminding myself that the birthday boy isn’t a wargamer and wouldn’t notice the lack of multiple highlights. And he’ll never know there was meant to be a plaque on the front. He probably won’t hate the green moss because it is too much… I’m going to stop. It’s good and though I didn’t get to be there for him opening it, I think it went down well.

After two years of aggressively attacking my grey mountain, I wanted this year to take a different direction for my hobby. I wanted to take a break from painting just to get paint down. To have a couple of projects that are about taking my time and doing things just for the love of it. It’ll sound preachy and it’ll be different for everyone but clearing the pile of shame has connected me back into my hobby in a way I haven’t felt for years.

Something I’ve always wanted to try has been dioramas. My grandfather was a train driver and raised three sons who each took their children to train museums and model railway exhibitions all through our early years. None of us have turned into railway hobbyists but we do all have a soft spot for them.

Anyone who followed my Black Dogs project will know that I found a love of 10mm last summer and spent a significant part of the latter half of 2021 painting up a dwarf army. Most of the models came from Pendraken who, it turns out, do an annual painting competition in February. Rather than submit something I’d worked on previous I reckoned it was a good time to do a wee diorama I had been thinking about.

So we’re working in 10mm and the base to count in the category I was eyeing up was maxed at 100mmx100mm.

It was around this time that work stopped me hobbying for a week and then by the curse of linear time, it was the night of the closing date. Photos of stages don’t exist. Just the end results (below).

Overall I’m happy with it. Of course I wish I had taken a little more time over it and there are lessons already but for a first try at something like this, I like it. I like the story being told and it was fun to do.

This was actually started when I was already part way through a different diorama which will be the next post but don’t expect it soon.