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Friday, April 11, 2014

New American Civil War Diorama / Display Base Pt 5 - Landscaping Start

The first steps to fleshing out the terrain started a few days ago. We've already seen:

- The Styrofoam applied to the board
- Carving the basic landform
- Covering the carved spots with joint compound. I could have used paper mache', plaster, grout, or spackling compound but the joint compound was already on hand
- Then, all the small cracks and crevices that developed were filled in with a very thin layer of more joint compound
-The entire top was given an initial coat of dark brown paint

The next steps are what we'll see today. First I took a sort of medium brown color and dry brushed the terrain features. 'Dry brushing' means that you dip the brush in the paint - a little bit only - then wipe most of the paint off on a piece of paper. The brush should only have a wee bit of paint on it. The purpose behind this is so that you don't completely cover the dark brown underneath. Some brown needs to peek out from beneath as this gives depth to the landscape. Multiple light applications will be required. HOWEVER, if you do accidentally glob on paint and cover a little bit of the brown don't panic. You can just leave it or correct it later - no biggie.

This step is followed by yet another dry brushing with a light tan color. With this step you only want to highlight - do not cover all of the medium brown or dark brown.

The terrain has been highlighted and the roads/paths have been roughed-in with paint



I've also started adding the road. I didn't have any sand but did have some fine buff colored ballast from Woodland Scenics. The process for doing this will be covered in the next installment.


Enjoy!

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