Really nice to watch you work on your scenery, Mark.  Its coming together nicely.

Cheers, Mark.

From one Mark to another, Thanks.  I'm enjoying this project.  Many challenges ahead.

Nest is a picture of failure.  This is the look at the retaining wall with the Rembrandt soft pastels added, and my misguided use of dulcote to seal the colors in place.  As you can see, it looks like frosted grey granite.  Not what I was looking for.  The natural tones from the Rembrandt pastels was wiped away.  Should've known better.  You can still see some muted tones, but nothing like it was.

Next, I filled in the area between the road, and the buildings with sculptamold.  I was leaning towards a cobblestone road from Monster Modelwork's in front of Callahan's, but am having second thoughts.  I may go with concrete, since the area behind Rochelle Enamel will have a concrete road, and the three different road surfaces may be too busy.

This is an overhead shot.  This is also my first automobile guardrail from scratch.  The wood posts may seem large to some of you, but there is a story behind it.  My brother used to work for a frame company in Sheboygan Wisconsin in the early 70's called Decorel or Decoral.  I don't think they exist anymore.  They made picture frames.  They also made three dimensional kits for deep frames, that people would cut out, and make the images appear 3D.  Anyway, I enquired about the wood used in those 3D kits, and he ended up giving me a large box of 1/8 square pieces in 4 and 6 inch lengths.  Needless to say, I have enough of these to last my entire kit building life, and I try to include some of this wood in each structure I build in honor of his memory. 

Next, I added various scenic materials above and below the retaining wall, in addition to the some of the areas around the rock formation.  I also added some posts for a wooden guard rail that will be placed in front of the retaining wall.  I spoke to a friend in the hobby, and he suggested I add the wooden guard rail.  I had been mulling it over, but he helped seal the deal, and I'll add guard rails to the ocean side as well.  If you haven't noticed, I'm working from the inside of the diorama out.  The sea walls, and rock features will be the last items to add before the water.  This will be quite a large project.  I'm not using as much compression as Doug used when he designed the kit.

Next up.  I added some sculptamold along the top and bottom of the retaining wall, and along the edge of the rock formation.  I colored the area with Woodland Scenics Earth Undercoat, and added a road using Durham's Rock Hard putty.  The road was done over two days.  With the portion closest to the wall done first, then adding the other half the next day using the first portion as a guide.  The road has a slight peak for water runoff. 

Next is the rock formation at the end of the retaining wall.  I apply a medium wash of India Ink and alcohol, then immediately hit it with thin washes of Liquitex Yellow Oxide, Burnt Umber and Neutral Grey. It appears a little dark since this was taken right after all the colors were applied, it will lighten overnight.  I prefer to have my rocks be light in color, as they tend to darken over time.  To repeat, I used thin washes.  Woodland Scenics has videos on rock coloring, and they are very informative.  There are also plenty of options on Youtube as well.  There are countless ways to color plaster rocks.  I don't use dulcote on any of my rock castings.

The next day, I did something that Brett from Sierra West Models uses to color his wood strips.  He has a great video on his site outlining the process.  The video isn't long, and it inspired me to try to attempt this process on plaster castings.  I used the following Rembrandt soft pastels:  Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, two Raw Umbers, numbered 408.3 & 408.5 and finally gold Ochre.

I had success with this method before, but this time, I had a few issues.  One of which occurs after I apply the wash/stains with isopropyl alcohol.  The alcohol evaporates leaving the color behind, with some really nice tones, but the color is not 'set'.  It is still active, and as you'll see later, when I attempt to use dulcote, the color disappears, and you're left with a frosted grey granite like color with very slight variations.  This was not what I wanted.  But here, with this wall, I left the colors 'as is' then applied a drybrush of Linen craft paint.  The drybrush was muted by the fact the pastel colors leached onto the brush, requiring a lot of 'reloads' to finish the job.