Hello everyone

I have recently started modelling in 1:45/1:48 scale because it allows me to combine my interests of building military models with model railroading and diorama building.

I have begun building a diorama, set in rural Germany around 1930 for use as a base to photograph my models on.



The right side of the diorama will consist of a cliff with a castle tower and walls on top. Below the cliff a narrow gauge railroad is making its way and to the left a small halt allows tourist to get off the train and visit the old castle.

I've written a bit about the first part of the diorama building along with inspirational pictures of German castles on my blog here:
http://oscalemodel.com/dioramas/castle-diorama-i-the-base



Above you can see the first part of the base under construction. Below the castle I made room for a dungeon.



The dungeon under construction. Read more about the dungeon here:
http://oscalemodel.com/dioramas/castle-diorama-ii-the-dungeon



Yesterday I started painting the interior for the dungeon, made from Hirst Arts casts.



And here they are in place in the dungeon. See more pictures here:
http://oscalemodel.com/dioramas/castle-diorama-iii-dungeon-interior

The next step will be to work on the rail, the road crossing and the small halt. Any ideas or comments so far?

looking forward seeing more

nice job, looking forward for more

cheers

nice stair in the dungeon!
Looking forward to see another castle :-)

Claude

Thanks :-)

I have just ordered your book for inspiration, even though I cannot hope to reach your amazing level of craftmanship.

Good morning Benjamin

Thank you very much for your order! The book is leaving Luxembourg today!

You have a good start to a nice build, no worry, you will be fine! Just take your time and have fun.

Cheers

Claude

Yo Occam,

Nice subject to work on. I do like diorama's with an railroad running true it.

Also the scale is interesting...1:48 scale that is a scale that I have to try sometime.

Good start!

Maybe your wooden base, the wooden sheet that rest on the table is to thin. On the first pic you can see the bend on it (left side). Beware of that, It maybe causes some cracks later on in the groundwork. Make sure you start always with a firm and solid base.

Greetz Nico

Hi Nico, thanks for your reply.

When I started planning the diorama, I didn't have such a massive castle planned, so if I were to start over, I would probably use a thicker baseboard.

But fortunately, it is not as bad as it looks. The first image is deceiving, something is stuck under the board in the left side. So far the board is quite level, and I hope it will stay that way with a couple of kilos of plaster on top. :-)

My experience from earlier dioramas tells me, that gluing a thick layer of expanded polystyrene helps keeping the board level, so I am not too worried. :-)

Claude, thank you very much for the book and for signing it. I will be publishing a review of your excellent book on my blog shortly.



In the meantime, I've found some time to build some more on the diorama. As you can see above, I am trying to combine the fieldstone castle walls with a halftimbered house leaning against the wall.



Here is the view of the rising castle seen from the narrow gauge track.

There are many more images from the construction in my blog post here: http://oscalemodel.com/di...mberwork-and-stone-walls

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome. :-)

Yo Occam,

Nice update on the wall section...just keep in mind to watch the pattern on the wall, build them so they don't have always the same patern in some parts of the wall, like in the middle of the curved wall.

Good job, keep up!

Greetz Nico

Thanks for the tip Nico.

Inspired by Claude's great work with his castle, I decided to cover parts of the fieldstone in plaster to give a more varied and worn look.

I found a ton of inspiration in Claude Joachim's book about the construction of his great diorama, so I wrote a review of it on my blog:
http://oscalemodel.com/reviews/review-capturing-clervaux-a-modelers-tale

I can't really recommend the book enough...

Thank you very much for this review Occam. I will put a link to your review on my webste.

I am really glad you like it and hope others will discover that also. It's still time to get it before Christmas! If you want it signed , please drop me a separate mail.

Thank you
Claude

Ps. Just to make it clear, Occam's review was made without me pushing him to make it positive.

I'm glad you like it Claude. :-)



At the moment I am building the castle higher and higher. At the same time I am wondering how to paint and detail the fieldstone walls. I've made a small experiment here:
http://oscalemodel.com/model-buildings/experiments-with-hirst-arts-fieldstone

The plastering went ok, but the paintjob was a complete failure, but fortunately it was only on a small test wall.

The progress of the castle diorama has been slow for a while, but now I've able to squeeze in some time for building, and it is a lot of fun :-)

I finally reached the top of the wall and have begun constructing the crenellations. Now I just need one million casts to finish the tower... :-/



An upcoming challenge will be how to built the half-timbered house. I am gluing on the timbers and think about filling the spaces in between with coloured plaster, but I never tried it before. Any ideas?

I've written a bit about the construction of the diorama here, including something on how to make an arrow slit in a thick wall here:
http://oscalemodel.com/dioramas/castle-diorama-v-cliffs-and-arrow-slits

Hey,
First of all it looks great until now, can’t wait to see it finished. About the half-timbered house you could cut pieces of cardboard to the same size as the spaces, (you can cut out windows too). you can then cover them in plaster, when dry smooth out the sides. Then glue in place.

I hope this is helpful. It is a cheap and simple methode.
regards

Yo Occam,

The build up off the castle is turning out very well!! The trick with the plaster is a good choice.

Love the pics on your blog with the castle on that rock.

Keep up!

Greetz Nico

Obviously. to paint such a lot of stones you have a few options.

Doing the grout first, for that you should paint the whole wall your desired grout color, feeling well the joints. After that, you paint your stones one by one, well from above and below because you want to keep your 3D work and not only do a dybrushing.
That's how i did the castle, mainly also because i painted the stones with a huge palette of colors.

You may try this way first:

Paint your stones completely as you wish, then after some drying time you protect the color as good as possible with varnish and whatever coats possible.
Then you fill your grout, either with color only or even a fine sand mix. (diluted glue applied first in the grouts)
This depends a bit on how deep you want the joints.
You wip whatever you applied from the top of the stones as much as possible.
Only need to retouch then all the spots where the stone color came off

Regarding the half timbered house. I never made one so i do not have a tip for you, but Guy Van Ginneken recently made an exellent one here on the board.
I looked it alread up but was unable to find it . Perhaps anyone else can help with the link.

Cheers

Claude

Thanks for all the tips. I have been thinking alot about how to paint the wall while casting, filing and building all the pieces.

This weekend I finally completed the construction of the castle itself, so now it is time for painting. I made a number of experiments with colours for the wall which looked terrible, but I think I may be on the right track now.



I covered part of the walls with plaster to hide the individual castings. Being inspired by a book of old buildings in Burgundy, I decided for a light beige base colour and to add variation on top of that.



Here the wall in painted the base light colour and a brown/grey wash added. I think now it is time to add washes in different shades to individual stones for more variation.

I've posted many more images here, including one of the real tower which inspired the colour:
http://oscalemodel.com/dioramas/castle-diorama-vi-reaching-the-top

Any ideas or suggestions are more than welcome :-)

for stonework you may consider at technique that is commonly called underpainting. paint the whole wall one colour, paint some of the stones chosen randomly a secondary hue (maybe the base colour with red, blue and brown added) then airbrush the whole wall with a very thinned coat of the original base colour, ensuring the colours you have laid down are still visible just ghosted by this over painting.

this is an easy way to get variety in the stones without making it look like a lego project. the various coloured stones and the base coat are the "under painted" layer and the over sprayed thinned top coat unifies this layer making the structure look more as a complete piece. then washes and highlights to weather the piece (try using a foam sponge to create interesting speckling on the stonework). cheers, bd.

PS: you should take a fine grit sandpaper and remove the streaks that appear in the plaster from your building, it is very apparent in the last pic and will only keep getting more noticeable as you weather.

wonderful work, you must be enjoying it
and we see him

Domi

Thanks for your advice. I used some sandpaper on the walls and you were quite right in that it was needed.



The next step has been to add grass and moss to the cliff as well as painting the rocks. The castle wall obviously needs a lot of vines and other overgrowth in order to break the lines of the fieldstones, so that is one of the next steps.



I've also worked on the narrow gauge railroad running at the base of the cliff as well as adding a small halt for tourist coming to visit the diorama :-)

I've written about the construction here with lots of photos of the process:
http://oscalemodel.com/model-railroad/castle-diorama-vii-grass-moss-and-ballast

Comments and ideas are more than welcome

I'm sorry i missed the earlier update so may not want to touch it any more, but i don't really get your partly plaster covering of some of the stones.
It is very obvious on the last picture of the wall. The plaster is translucid.
Honestly, i do not like to much this view.

It is ok to hide your castings and seams or cracks, but , IMO, you should have made the plaster cover thicker.
You can still do this now. It is basically like i did my castle plaster work. (you should find some pictures of it in my book)
You can reweather the plaster later without problem.

See first what others have to say

Cheers
Claude

Hi,

It’s looking good, but I must agree with Claude the plaster is too thin. Did you finish the half-timbered structure? It’s nice to see it progressing.

Regards,

Wow, this is impressive work! May I ask how you actually formed your fieldstone walls? I'm assuming you casted them, correct?
You've inspired me! I've been back and forth with a ton of ideas for my dio, and I think I've finally got it! So, thank you for this amazing inspiration, I'll be following your build until it's finished!

Thanks for your comments.

Claude and Vladimir, you are quite right that the layer of plaster covering is too thin. I didn't really notice it myself, so it is great with some criticism from the good people here at Armorama. It won't be too much work applying a thicker layer and painting it again. I'll post some more images when it is done.

Brandi, thanks for the kind words :-)
The fieldstone walls are made from casts from Hirst Arts molds. Have a look here, where you can see some of the castings before painting:
http://oscalemodel.com/dioramas/monastery-diorama-ii-a-stable-foundation