here are some pics of my latest dio, my second one overall. this was my first attempt at a landscape and building trees. i made the tree from wire from reading the article here at armorama. the water is the woodland scenics realistic water. the grass is woodland scenics blended turf and the tall grass is made from paintbrush bristles. i havent titled it yet, but i can figure that out later.comments and the like are very much appreciated. merry christmas!

Nice work. How is it working with that water stuff?

This looks excellent meissen. Its great to work on simple little dios like this and improve on existing techniques and develop new ones. The river/stream banks are first class and carry this off nicely. The tree looks top notch also. The only thing that I can think of adding to this would be small stones, in the stream, in the banks and on the grassy patches. It adds more texture and colour, and also is realistic and free.
One other thing is the sides of your built up ground work. I think it looks like expanded polystyrene foam and is very visible. I personally would make my side from thin balsa wood for a more "professional" look and paint it the same as the frame. If balsa is not available, cardboard could be used.
The lips on your figure are very red and look like lipstick. A good tip I read somewhere is to mix a little wine colour into your skin colour and paint the bottom lip only. This is what I use now and gives good results.
Great work overall, and keep these coming.

petro, the water is pretty nice to work with. it takes quite a while to set though. Plasticbattle, ill try that technique, sounds like it will improve the face quite a bit. i glued on some black posterboard to the sides last night, but something didnt really seem right with that. ill have to try the balsa wood. thanks for the input

looks great the water looks really nice.
for your 2 dio that came out very good.
but u should put more stuff next to the guy,
like a gun with a box of amao and may be another guy behinde him to make it look like there are talking

Nice peaceful dio. Looking good with the smoke from the cigarette.

nice river bank!

hey meissn, thats some nice work, the only thing that i would change/or add is movemant in the water, ripples, rocks, it just looks a little to calm. overall i give it an 8 out of ten.

matt

looks great
is so peacefull, seems the war went far away
merry christmas (:-)

thanks for all the praise guys. i was going for that serene vibe and it looks like i pulled it off. i do need to buy some of the shapable water to make the ripples, so once i get that, ill be set. i didnt include any rocks cuz i was trying to simulate a creek like my grandma's, which has clay/dirt banks and is covered in deep mud at the bottom, i've got lots of memories there,so what better way to create than from first hand accounts? anyway, thanks for the pointers.

Meissen,

a good job you did here. It really breathes a quiet "out in the country atmosphere". I love the lighting effect in the second diorama, it' like he's taking a rest in the afternoon sun and that he's enjoing every minute of it.

Unfortuntely the first and third picture are a little short on light, hiding the beautiful scenic details on the diorama. Maybe some extra light while taking the pictures would improve the overall scene.

Very nice diorama... very "real life like" !

NB : This being your first attempt on making trees, maybe it's a good idea to post a couple of detailed pictures of that tree. With those pictures we could have a close look at it and post our thoughts on improving it.

As I can make up from the current pictures, it looks good, but I have some doubts on the trunk.... detailpics coul help me here.

Wonderful job. You are approaching building dioramas very well. Pick a skill and try it out on a small easily managable project.
This one came out really well.
On your tree you may want to add a bit of a drybrush highlight to bring out the bark a bit.

I love the feel of this diorama.

The smoke cominf off of the cigarette looks really good in the light of the second picture. Nicely done overall!

GREAT WORK - CONGRATS
ROBERTO

Your second diorama looks a LOT nicer than my second attempt many years ago! What did you use to cast your water?

Also - while the photos are hard to see due to lighting, it seems you did a good job on skin tones.

Adding a ducks or birds to the scene would help give it a peaceful look.

thanks for the comments everybody. eagle, the tree needs a lot of work. up close in real life the trunk doesnt look real at all. i need to practice making them. my second tree will undoubtably look much better. kfmagee, i used the woodland scenics realistic water stuff. i liked using this but its quite expensive at $15 a bottle. are there any other cheaper ways to make water?

meissen unfortunatly, there are no alternative ways, well not to my knowledge anyway, there are a few more alternatives for water like resin but that is still really expensive.

matt

Looks great Meissen, you did a real good job, cheers

For water I prefer to use EZ-POUR by Envirotex (http://www.misterart.com/store/view.cfm?group_id=4291008&store=003&AID=10273655&PID=1287908).... the stuff is NOt that expensive and goes a LOOONG way. Dries quickly and perfectly clear, although easily colored with tint or inks....

Another really cheap way of making water is to use a few (the more the better) layers of gloss varnish. Paint the river bed a dark brown or dark green. Then paint several layers with the varnish and some dark green mixed in. Each layer should have less green. Then for the choppy water or ripples use spuer glue clear gel. Use a tooth pick to make peaks. When totally dry paint with a couple of clear layer of pure gloss varnish. Paint a layer every day for 10 days and good results can be got. This works better for deeper type water or shallow puddles. If you decide to have some stones showing through it adds to the effect and looks good with ripples around them. The picture below was from my second dio when I attempted to make water. I used this method and got the following result.

i have to congrats u for the nice lil dio . i like very much the tree and the scene setup as well as the water also . A nice lil scene, i ve never done something so small i think is time to do one

Wow!! Is this one of your first Dioramas? Well for a begginer like me, i think this is OUTSTANDING! I'm almost finishing my first Diorama, and I'll post some pictures here soon... But it's really a very good job!!! Such peacefulness is great..

See yaaa

Hey, that looks really good. Its also simple to. I have a question, the tree, how did ya do that?

I love that water, it turned out really nice!

~Chip :-)

thanks for the water ideas plasticbattle and kfmagee. ill have to try those out next time. chip, for the tree i used bunched wires like the article general failure put on armorama. i think i used too thick of wire and not enough strands, but it was all i could find. to do the bark i used spackle, which didnt turn out too well. the foliage was made by gluing lichen onto the tops of the branches. once they dried, i sprayed the lichen with some of that woodland scenics glue (a huge waste of money) and sprinkled some of my mom's spices on it to simulate leaves. i cant remember exactly what i used, but it looked a lot like leaves. after that i painted the foliage in dark green and dry brushed it.