Size: 60cm (2ft. ) x30cm (1ft. ) 1.7kgs.
As with the Viking diorama I have stayed with the smaller size. This decision meant I had to make a big change to my original scheme which was to incorporate a Viking ship (I had one but after I’d made the base I found it wouldn’t fit). With the necessary change of plan, the end result was a scratch built fishing boat and a smaller area of water with a little creek and jetty .
Again, the idea came to me from when I was a kid and we built a Saxon fort out of sharpened match sticks in mum’s garden with the same old Airfix ancient Britons. This time though the match sticks were all individually hand scraped to remove the square cut look and give a bit more of a roughly hewn tree appearance and the figures are Vikings and Saxons which were not available back then. The big challenge I had though was with the water. I purchased this water product some years ago but was still putting off its use because it was one you that required melting instead of poring it on as a liquid. I decided to give it a go though and sure enough it turned out to be a big mistake as it turned yellow and set far too quickly! So bugger that, I ripped it out, built another jetty and used the liquid form of the product which I was used to. This one gives plenty of time to work with it before it sets, but a word of warning, it does not set hard like a resin so don’t leave anything resting on the surface otherwise you will end up with an indentation.
One again, I found a use for my favourite animal figures which are so well made I really like to be able to use them whenever I can.
As we all know the time spent on any diorama is in the painting. However, these ones I did whilst doing the Romans so I only had to do the static grass, the bushes and bulrushes, a few sparse trees and place the figures. The time taken though was longer than usual even with the fewer figures, as I found placement harder than on the crowded Roman one.
The general consensus of the finished product was that that a back scene was not required so at the moment there isn’t one.
Pat's 1:72 Military Diorama's 