I finished the dio last night. I must say that it has been a great learning experience. After 20 years of almost no modeling it's hard to get back to it. This helps. I was going to take some photographs outside but it is still overcast .. so I said 'what the heck' and snapped of the following photos.
Here is the finished dio.
That little sign on the sawhorse says "Road Closed. The sawhorse was difficult to make! My gosh that is 'fiddley' work (or whatever the word is for that kinda of stuff). It is actually built like a real sawhorse .. the horizontal piece the legs attach to is an I-Beam built up from three 2"x4" !!
A little closer. Sometimes I get good photos and other times I don't. One of these days I suppose I will start to figure out the camera settings.
Put my hand into that last scene for scale. The dio is only 5"x7"
Swung the camera around a bit. First "Learning Point". The next time I do roots (I like roots) .. make 'em smaller. Also .. where the soil has broken away from the cliff it shouldn't be so 'tapered' .. at least some of the surface should be seen .. like a slice through a cake with smaller rootlets dangling.
A little closer look at them 'fat boys'. Color isn't right .. need to take a walk in the roots and look closer at roots exposed by erosion
The little Cardstock Outhouse came out pretty well. I think if I was to do it again I would print it out twice and cut the individual boards out. Still .. it's ok .. well .. even better if it is not sitting right next to the edge of the layout. If place back a ways you couldn't tell it was printed.
Another view. Man .. can you imagine if you were REALLY making use of the facility .. and the wind kicked up? Betcha that joker would rock ..
I swung the camera around to the 'back side' here ..
The good thing about a camera is that it shows you what can be done better. One think is I tend to use too dark shades and colors. I need to lighten it up.
The cliff casting came out pretty well ... but the 'chunks' that have fallen off onto the old road are a lot more angular then the layered 'rock' on the cliff. That is partly because I used crumpled aluminum foil to make the plug for the latex mold. I'm trying something different .. I'm pouring thin layers of plaster and breaking them into strips which I am gluing up into a layered rock wall. It looks a lot better .. after all .. it IS layered rock (plaster) instead of scribing. Whether it works when I get to trying to make a mold .. donno. Guess I will find out.
The ground cover on top of the cliff is too dark as I said. That is partly because I gathered the soil out behind my house .. it's loamy and the tea which is dark. Need to run around and find lighter colored soils.
This was fun .. and is priceless as a 'teaching tool'. I highly suggest anyone interested in improving their modeling skills make a diorama .. just a scrap of wood the size of you hand where you can practice making roads (thinking of doing that .. from dirt road to highway).
