Hi Claude
this answer is simple as water! I never though to paint the wood.
Probably I though to cover the walls with plaster to simulate the real plaster, and to carve it to simulate the stones, also where there are small damages on the walls.
I will try your method in the next house (by the way there's a firm called Miniart that can save me a lot of time in building houses......

Thank you again
Cheers
Alessandro

Absolutely amazing work! You should be very proud of this! You are an inspiring artist. I have not built any dioramas yet but after seeing your work have decided to start displaying my kits as dioramas.

Thanks Jerry , I will put a present for you under the tree :-)
Jason, thank you very much and great to here. I am a bit proud of that one.

Alessandro, just to make it a bit more clear.

You may always build your house using different mediums at a first place. If you have a heavy damaged wall to display, why not build this wall completely with plaster (plasterboard for example, the stuff with paper on the sides). You can always use your chipboard for the sides without damage.

You may also use Styro or foam walls. (it holds plaster very well, probably better then wood)
You can eventually scrib in your stone pattern in the Styro or foam and cover the other parts with Acrylic paste.
I made already walls with 1 cm thick cork sheets. Scrib in your stone pattern or any damage, the rest can be painted directly or some facade be applied with a paste.

First think about the effect you want and then choose the best material!

Claude

Claude, you are incredible! The small radio/Christmas tree is superb, but your patience for the repetitive tasks - geez, I can't find the power in me to start a Churchill with all those roadwheels.

I will send you some books for under your real Xmas tree, I hope you will enjoy them!

Claude ... what can I say. I guess as I've said in the past. This thing is simply incedible!
Don't know what else to say really! Everything about it is impressive.
I would LOVE to get over there some time to see it in person!

Hi Lazlo, glad to hear from you. Regarding the Churchill. IMO, if doing roadwheels of a vehicle is already boring, you should try other things to do, figure painting, or anything else... look for something really motivating




????? Hmm , what should they be?? Man, you got me here and I am really looking forward to it.


Bill, showing a sign of life and acknowledging that you are still following the thread is great already. Thanks! I know that people have a hard time commenting (by the way, where is Scott Lodder?), so I am satisfied already to now that I am not updating here for nothing and you guys enjoy seeing this thing of mine progress.

Enough talked, back to work, i have a half meter street to drybrush :-)

Claude

Hi Guys,

I want to give you an opportunity to comment and eventually suggest changes as I am planning to fix my farmer's house tomorrow and I will not be able any more to reach the front side.
The backside is accessible of course as I will fill the kitchen with all the furniture when placed.





Hope you like it

Claude

In a word - WOW!

Thank You for this endeavor, 'tis truly inspiring. To be able to exhibit in an organized public space as well tells us all a great deal about your dedication Claude.
Sharing is Caring
Dave

Claude

Formidable!!....Since you asked and you will no longer have access to this farmhouse front, I wonder if the boards on the outside above the lower roof would show more variation in aging as the damp would attack the lower parts and often the top parts get much lighter. This is only a suggestion and whatever you do I have no doubt that it will look spectacular.

John

Thank you Dave! I am myself very satisfied about the look of the hay and straw levels as it is how i imagined it beforehand.

Thanks John for the comment.
I will have access to the sides, just the front will be at a handwide apart from the next house only (it is defintely to near , but i have no space any more :-) ), meaning i can't handle a brush or other tool any more. I will just have enough space to do the groundwork with a spatula.

The planks are weathered like you wrote (darker on the bottom), but i may add more, no problem. I was probably to cautious here.

Thanks

Claude

Bonjour Claude,
I used to grew up mostly at my grandparents farm(somewhere in the Elsass area) and looking at those pictures made memories come back to me. You really matched it...can't wait for your next post and put me on the list for the next book

btw: to me the woodwork is exactly what I remember...

Couldn't be happier then! Thanks Holger

By the way, I started writing on the second book and I hope to have something ready by the same time I plan the finishing of the dio, in one year.

Claude

The farmhouse is really looking the business Claude. The interior is awesome and looks very convincing.I want to climb into the hay and take a nap. The outside is also good but I am thinking about the color of the wood. You have captured the colors very well for exposed wood and it looks just like oak. I am thinking it still looks kind of new. Oak weathers slowly but if your building is old then maybe some more medium grey tones?
J

Thank you Jerry

I will take your input into account and will check some more reference pictures and eventually retouch some wood on the backside.

I just put the farm house in place and i like to show you a picture of the setup. You discover it only minutes after me as I especially mounted the towers on the bridge and placed the willow tree to get my first complete look


Back to the farmhouse. The pictures from my prior post were taken with a few hundred watt photo light directed into the house. The picture above shows how this will be seen normally. Pretty dark, isn't it? I inserted two LED lights (one in the kitchen and one in the attic)to provide indirect lights if needed. Hope it will be enough as to much work is going into this details to stay invisible later.

Thanks all for your comments
Claude

just spent an hour looking through this thread and all i can say is wow it is truly amazing and is the best diorama i have ever seen
thanks for sharing
Curtis

Moien Claude,

as Dave put it..."wow"

Hard to believe, but you are still getting better and better!!

Congratulations!!!

One tiny little detail I noticed is the (too?) straight lines and clean angles around the window apertures. Hardly worth noticing, even less adapting, but you set such high standards. one tends to get picky

Thanks for posting!!! Always makes my day!

Cheers

Romain

Thanks Curtis, i appreciate that and i'm always happy to see a new face.

Moien Romain,

Thanks for looking, hope you will get to see it once in real!

You think that the window apertures are looking to good, if i understand your post correctly?

I would just like to mention that i did not build an abandoned farm house, but a working one, so i defintely did not want to make it look like an abandoned one.

Next on my working plan is the filling of the farm house kitchen with all the stuff i made already and some other bits i will need to scratch.

Also on the To- do list is a painting session.
Hardly noticable on the back left side of the last picture is the bridge with the towers.
Those elements are painted with completely different stone colour tones and do not match at all. This does defintely not look good and i need to find a compromise to make the tower/bridge couple look more homogenous.

Thanks everyone! I appreciate your input

Claude

Easily the most realistic dio that I have ever seen. I still pay homage to your groundwork,it is so real looking
J

Hi Claude,

(just maybe) too good only if I compare them with the ones for the doors.
Nobody would like to see a ruin (especially not me)

Cheers

Romain

Looking great as always - what did you use for straw/hay in the barn?

Hi Claude,

Another outstanding building to add to the scene. Amazing stuff. On the light into the farm house issue, it might be an idea to open a door or two.

Always a real pleasure and inspiration to watch your work.

Cheers

Al

Romain, thanks, you know that i do a lot by improvisation and due to whatever circumstance and ‎‎/or choice of material there are different results in the finishing.‎

Thanks Alan! Good idea basically but the next house is at a dozen centimeters only, so even a opened door would not bring much .


How i did the hay and straw?‎

I used balls made of the fibrous material of the foliage from [quote]" Posidonia oceanica ‎‎(commonly known as Neptune Grass or Mediterranean tapeweed) is a seagrass species that is ‎endemic to the Mediterranean Sea" [/end quote]. ‎
These balls are washed on shore and I luckily found some during my recent holiday in ‎Corsica.‎

When i saw the stuff i immediately checked it if it can't be used for modeling (you know that ‎instinct) and it occured to me that i read about this stuff for making hay a lot of years ago and ‎strangely never again from then on.‎
And i redicovered it just days before i had to do straw myself. I already tested hemp, sisal, cocos fibre and other stuff.
It's no surprise to anyone if i tell you that i brought home by plane a maximum of this balls.‎

I sawed two of them in pieces to keep the compact structure and added on top of the stack (using spray adhesive) some ‎pretainted fibres, painted dark yellow for the straw and green colours for the hay.‎

The even finer debris are spread on the floor.




I just hope that the stuff will not composte in a year or so



Claude

great straw Claude (still looking!)

Thanks Nicolas

During the final stages of a project (in this case this one module) there are a lot of little thins to do, final painting steps, weathering, final detailing and so on.

While i did a few such things during the last weeks i have only one of this detailing things to show you today.

On an old reference picture of Clervaux i discovered a letterbox hanging on the sides of a house, incidently near the Hotel Central, the one i build.

I inquired with our local post museum about the exact prewar-colour of letter boxes and they send me this picture of an original box.


I tried to copy it and got this result


The lettering is 1 mm Aber photoetch, the posthorn is made of Magic sculpt. Under the horn, invisible on the picture, is an opening, probably to show picking up times. I will add something here later.
I mention this because otherwise you might rightly suggest to put the horn lower. This is not possible.
It was impossible to get all the original text in, i was already lucky to get this one somewhat nicely.

I think this will make a nice and colourful addition to one of my facdes.

Ok, now comes some advertisement :-)

It is still time to order my book for Christmas! I send one to the States recently and it arrived 7 days after the order was done.
So tell your wife and/or love that you absolutely need this book for your collection and make us both happy with an order!

Greets

Claude

Claude - the problem of the build photo with the new stones in the river is where you are focused and lack of depth of field. Since the depth of field in this shot is so shallow, I'm guessing that the lens is wide open (or close to it), because you don't have enough light. You either need to provide more light, and/or put the camera on a tripod so you can use a smaller aperture for better depth of field. I believe I saw a special forum here for photographing models and dios.

There are also programs available where you can take multiple photos (tripod is mandatory - or for you, de rigeur ;-), focusing at different distances, and then stitch them together so everything is in focus.

Charles