Need help in creating the effect of sand....and, recommendations on how to create footprints.

Thanks in advance.

Greg
E8

Best thing to use to portray sand is probably, well, sand. Use fine sand from your yard or even gutter silt. If you don't have these most LHS's sell a range of sand and stone products, normally for railroad modellers.

To make footprints use your figures to make the imprints. Alternatively there is a company making various scale boots in silicone for precisely this use - unfortunately I'm pulling a blank on there name at the moment - could be something like Cast35?

Calibre 35 has a full range of "footprints" but you could do them yourself of figures for alot less - especially since youre trying to do them in sand. What type of medium are you using for groundwork? You could use White glue for this application and just build up the layers of sand using whats avail. Just keep in mind that wet sand has a totally different consistency than the dryer stuff further up the beach.

Chris

Cheers Chris, that's the one I was thinking of! The same parent company has Calibre35, Calibre48 and I think Calibre72

Just be sure to use the finest grains you can find, i've used stuff meant for sandblasting before...

yeah you can't really beat sand at looking like itself. In theory you should scale down a grain of sand 35 times and you would get a very powdery dust like fine silt, but in practice bigger stuff seems to look better on dioramas so go for the smallest sand you can get. Ideally you want the sort that you get in hourglasses but i have no idea where you could buy this in bulk.

I used a combination of both, fine sand for consistency and powder for filler and color.

Good luck on your Dio,
Bob

Hey Greg

I don't know what your model collection is like but in some kits they have figures, the older tamiya ones were poor quality but you can easily use an old figure to replicate footprints rather then buying a footprint stamper for $$$. If you don't have any old figures from old kits, your LHS might have some figure sets for cheap... most times you never see the tread pattern, and it doesn't have to be a huge divet to replicate footprints. Good luck!!

Greg, try to find what is refered to as baby sand or playbox sand. It is very fine and lays down ral good.

The best sand I've found so far was the dust bath for rodents you can buy in pet stores. Just be sure not to buy the scented stuff, because nothing ruins a diorama worse than penetrating vanilla scent.