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A Simple Diorama

Painting the base

After leaving the undercoats to dry for a few days, you can start to paint the base. For this I use an airbrush mainly because its just easier. I use a Badger 200 single action airbrush with Tamiya acrylic paint.

We start by laying in the colours from the ground up. By this I mean start with the color of the lowest object on the base (in this case the cobble stones). Use a light grey color and mist this over the base allowing the black undercoat to show through [figure 39]. Allowing the black base coat to show through will help with the weathering stages later.

After the first color has been applied, lighten the color and spray it again. This will give an impression of depth to the ground work [figure 40]. The next step is to add the brick color by spraying the brick and rubble areas with a matt red color. Don't worry at this point about any over spray [figure 41]. Like before, allow the black base coat to show through.

The next step after the brick color has been added is to paint the grass areas green (I bet you guessed that). After all the grass has been colored green, pick out the wood and any boxes you have added. At this point I also painted the oil drums [figure 43].

I have also picked out individual bricks in different shades of the base color with a brush [figure 44]. At this stage the individual bricks look a little bright, but when we start to weather the base this brightness will disappear. By changing the color of some of the bricks you bring the wall surface to life. if you look at a real brick wall you'll see that no two bricks are the same shade [figure 45].

Now that the main components have been painted we need to blend them together. I do this by spraying a dark brown color around the base. Use this to cover any areas that have not yet been painted and blend the rest of the components together [figure 46].

Mist the dark brown color around the base. By misting I mean allowing just a hint of the color to show on the base. Generally, this can be done by keeping the airbrush further away from the base [figure 47].

Give the walls a good misting leaving a heavier concentration near the base [figure 48]. You will also find this will tone down the color of the bricks somewhat and help blend them together [figure 49]. While you have this color in your airbrush mist the bottom half of your model. This will help blend it to the base when the time comes to attach it.