This is my first dio in 1/35th scale. I'm almost content with it, but the palm leaves just don't look right. Any ideas would be appreciated.






More pics here.

Hey, that looks pretty good. I think that palm leaves look good. Nothing wrong with them from my POV. I like the roadsign to, how did you do that. Very nice job. And its your first so it is really great!

~Chip :-)

The palm looks good to me. If you were to do anything to it you may want to add dark shading to represent 'rot' dead stuff where the leaves have been torn. Or light green hightlights to make ridges and ribs stand out.

I like the diorama - its cool - like the name too. The base is a cool shape.

The base is just wood that I was going to cut into a square, but I messed up cutting one side, so I decided to cut it in a circular pattern with my scroll saw. I cut a roll of cork to match the design, painted it the desert yellow and put it on top of the board. I crumpled up some paper towels and placed under the cork for the lump. Then I just hot glued it down to the base. Note: If you give it a hill like this, give some extra room to account for the lump. I didn’t think of it at the time. The wooden border looks uneven with the cork, but it's not too bad. The cork has the perfect look for dried out earth. It’s hard to see in the pics, but it does. The cracks in it look just like cracks caused by dry conditions. I did a little bit more work on shading the ground. I added a lighter shade of yellow to hint of a road. I mixed in some sand with my paint to give it the looks of small rocks. I then went to work on the grass. The tall yellow grass is field grass that I just planted in the small hill. The smaller brownish grass is cut from hemp rope. I just cut off a 2”piece and secured it at the middle with masking tape. I then cut it in half giving me two sections and dipped the top in brown paint. I then cut a small hole in the cork base with an exacto knife and inserted the masking tape base of the grass into it. After it was in there I just flared it out. The larger rocks are some volcanic rocks that are used to take odors out of the air. They are sold in a bag and I had them when I had some pets in the house, but I don't use them anymore. I painted them yellow and super glued them to the base. Any gravel type rock would do really. Next I used the left over cork to make the adobe bricks to make the well. I cut them into individual brick, super glued them together to form the well, and then used wood glue to seal in the cracks. I cut a hole where the well went and painted that dark brown and black to look like a deep hole in the ground. After that, I super glued the well over the hole and added a few “left over” bricks around it. I then made the sign and well cover out of balsa wood. The words and numbers are just hand painted on there (no decal). I did use a decal sheet I saw online as reference for the sign though. All of this is painted with a brush btw, no airbrush (haven’t invested in one yet). I just painted the sign to look old and worn out. I tied a piece of string from the sign going to the well to look like it was attached to a bucket, or container at the bottom of the well. The palm tree was done by using this method. Only difference is instead of wrapping the trunk in wire, I built it up using masking tape and then went around it with tissue paper. While the paper was drying I slashed it with my exacto knife to get the ripped bark effect. It took some work to get it looking just right, but I’m pleased with the trunk. I think I’ll go back and change the leaves to make them look browner. There are hints of brown in the leaves, but not enough. I had a lot of trouble placing the wire on the leaves (using super glue btw), and in the end I left 4-5 of them wireless and taped them on there. I then hot glued the tree to the base. The sand effect around the well and all over the quad gun tractor was thought up almost by accident. I had some cracks in the joints of the vehicle I wanted to patch up. I used sculpey, but I couldn’t get the right look and it looked too obvious. Then suddenly I got a brainstorm to mix in some yellow paint with it. So I got some paint on my hands and kneaded it until it was blended in. Then I just applied it to areas I thought sand would collect and sculpted it to where it looked like it was sweeping down and slowly falling off. It looks like it has been through a sandstorm. I was going to add a British 8th Army figure outside scratching his head and kicking the tire, indicating it wouldn’t start, but I didn’t want to take the time to mess with it. People said I had to customize a figure to have him kicking it and the figure I should use to customize would have to be ordered, was sort of rare, and blah, blah, blah. I might add a few figures later to give it more action, but probably just some infantry walking, or maybe an MP waving it on, or something.