Hello all,

I am going to try adding some scenery to my armor, not full out dio's yet but I am going to try and dress things up a bit. I have a couple questions for you guys (or gals)

1. Where do you get your supplies? Are there some web sites with a good selection of items? I am mainly looking for natural setting material, not city at this point.

2. What would you recommend to use for water for the first time?

3. Is there a list of items that anyone building natural scenery should not be without?

Thanks for your help all.

Best descriptions with excellent photographs has to be Doc´s Dios. He has some great tips and theres lots of good information there. I have and still do use it alot.
For water, check out the threads for the splash campign. Lots of great tips and opinions there!
All the best

Use of real dirt is recommended. Get a real super fine sifter and get several different shades of dirt and sift on a newspaper, then put the usable stuff in a bottle. that white glue in a pump spray bottle works great with it. I mold my shape out of cellu clay adding a brown acrylic paint to it (something close to the color of my dirt.) Let it totally dry, then spinkle the real dirt over it and finally pump spray white glue. I use H and K grass (though there are other companies that make it) which is a real superfine dark green material and do the same thing with the white glue. To make trees/bushes, see my post on Chips Doc Dio tree question

I have to agree with the others and say DocDio's, It helped me alot!
Enjoy

Drew

There is nothing better then what Nature offers you. A small walk in your back yard would supply you with a big load of really useable twigs and other thingys. Also things like sand found in your backyard would be quite suitable. Another thing I use a lot for my sand is birdcage sand It has a really nice fine grain and will look very good on the dio.
Kittylitter is a nice supply for small rocks and pebbles and crushed it serves quite good as sand too.
What I usually do when I make my groundworks is the following. I built up all the leveling I want with the Blue Styrofoam. Next I spray/smear a diluted white glue mixture on it. Then I will add rocks (kitty litter) here and there and I will add my sand. I make a depression in the Foam where I will stick and glue my trees (branches found in the backyard) in. I also make holes where my tall grass (brush bristles of those big soft haired paintbrushes the DIY shop sells) will be.`
When all this stuff is done I give the whole base an Airbrush job in a dark brown color and after that I give it a lot of oversprays in different tones of brown (always lighter) till almost sand color. Then I add the long grass and I spray/smear more diluted white glue on several places for my static grass wich I sprinkle on it after the diluted white glue.
Then I drybrush several spots on the groundwork such as roads in light (sand) colors to accentuate the places where the wheels will hit the road more and I use darker colors for gras where a lot of people have walked on and in shades of trees and bushes.
Bushes can be made with the stuff called "lychen" its very popular amongst the railroad builders and it is a good base for different foliage. Buy some dried herbs like parsley spray your lychen with diluted white glue and sprinkle the parsley on top of it you will see that the result is an outstanding bush or even tree top. Really easy to make and not expensive.
In stores like Michaels or Wallmart you should be able to find more stuff to make your foliage even better.
Water is always a bit of a hard object to re-create but I have seen a guy working with realistic water from woodland scenics and that was actually really good stuff. You might be able to find it in railroad hobby shops. It comes in a bottle. It`s transparent, not heat generating like clear resin it takes a while to cure but you can work on it for a long time

These are my 2 cents for now

Thanks for the help guys. So far I have put a base of celluclay down that I dyed "earth" color, the acrylic paint by woodland scenics. I will try and get some pictures of it posted.

doc dio's is a verry good site, helps me a lot.
i use in my dios a lot of natural stuff as moss (for grass), sand, rocks, small branches of trees and so on.
i also use filler and plaster
all my dios are scratchbuilt (in my country is also dificult to find plaster or resin kits

When i want to add detail to an armor kit without a true "diorama" to distract from the kit, I like to do two things...

1) If an urban scene, then I use a plaster road with a coblestone, brick, or concrete texture painted appropriately. I add in a few sprigs of green tinted paitbrush hairs to show some weeds or grassy growth. Then - strictly to show scale, I like to add in a few simple building features... maybe a wall with doorway, or perhaps a broken corner ruin from a barn... just something to give the scale. See Digital Diamonds #5 - Making a base from plaster" for more info on cheap ways to create a stone road).

2) If I am doing a more rural scene, I first sand my base board, and then add a light layer of spackle or plaster to provide some "earth texture" irregularities. Like Blaster mentioned, i also tint this with an earthtone acrylic paint to make sure I get no "white" dirt showing through anywhere. Once this is about 70% dry (ie, still somewhat damp but not wet), i impress a mixture of kitty litter around the roadway area, and then gradually smooth out to the edges by "thinning" with a bit of sand or fine silt like th "balast stone" sold in train stores. I always make sure to add the appropriate "tread" or "tire" imprints (See FEATURES->Digitial Diamonds #4 - "Making Tread Patterns" for more detail on "how"). Add in weeds, grass, etc. then seal everything with a misting of white glue to hold everything in place.

Put your vehicle in place, and you are done. If you are interested in a variety of bases, take a look at my website... I sell some nice bridge, stone roads, and urban street sections made of dental plaster that you may find useful. Here is one of my better sellers - a damaged urban street that can be adapted to add street car rails if desired...shown with optional sidewalk section in this photo...