Heavy Gear Blitz Diorama – part 5.
I made this diorama over 5-6 months (20-25 hours of work in total) in 2022.
In the following articles, I will cover the production thematically through the following units:
• Painting, camouflage and weathering on figures (robots and trucks)
• Manufacturing and installation of parachutes
• Making the base
• Adding Texture
• Painting of palm trees - already described here.
• Additional vegetation
• Adding narrative details to the diorama (foot with rocket launcher, landing ramp on the plane, camouflage tarp on the trucks).
Additional vegetation
In addition to the palm trees mentioned in the previous article, I also used shorter palm trees that Marko got for me in a discount store in Zagreb, static grass in 3-5 shades and 2-3 lengths, and plants intended for railway models from the manufacturer Ammo.
I started shortening the mentioned shorter palm trees with wire cutters, and thus I got another level for variety of height on the stand.
I painted them with a brush, and the tongs from Green Stuff World helped a lot with this, along with paper clips that I used to secure the short trees so they wouldn't move while I painted them.
When painting palm trees, regardless of the length of their trees, it is necessary, as with many other things in modeling, to look at examples from reality. It is important to note here that all leaves should not be the same shade of green, since not all leaves are at the same stage of life, so I suggest using various shades of green, olive green, as well as earthy yellow.
As for the rainforest soil, again the reference showed me that, wherever there is different vegetation in the same place, there will be different layers of decomposing organic matter (leaves, etc.), which will be in different stages of decomposition, and therefore different colors. This procedure in itself was quite frustrating, due to the fact that I applied watered-down Drvofix on several occasions, which did not harden as expected after a long drying time:
However, persistence paid off, and after several days and repeating the process of adding glue, the vegetation on the ground hardened and became robust. Then, following Marko's advice, I started adding sod grass, which in this scale also represents bushes. As I mentioned before, I used several different shades, from greens, olive greens, to browns and yellowish-browns, depending on the need and desire to achieve variety in shades.
Then came arguably the fiddliest part, which was cutting the paper plants. First, I painted 3-4 papers of such vegetation that I got from Dream Kit with Biel-Tan Green wash from Citadel, and let it dry. Then I persistently cut the leaves of the plants for 2-3 hours and gradually glued them to the stand with super glue, paying attention that they were not all too close to each other.
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