Justice City Dioramish

[MartyO]

Hello! 

It's has been awhile since last update. These posts are kinda in some order, but not really and you may see stuff I've added in later posts in the one you are viewing.

Ok, let's start with the rocky shore. I did a bunch if small find details in the colouring of the rocks and the bottom of the shoreline. The initial base colour was "quite" bright blue, but this was intended as it would add depth to the following layers of colours. The subsequent layers were a "wet blend" of bright green and a bit of black craft paint to tone it down a bit. It was "splotched" on the shoreline water to give a hint of algae.

Here are a few images of how it looked like at that time. Later on you will see how it almost worked as when the paint dried it was too black. Being that the paint is water-based, it was easier wiped off in spots to reveal the blue beneath. A cool effect.

[MartyO]

The harbour retaining wall was a bit of a challenge as I did not want to buy anything , but use what I had in stock which were scrapes of "failed" Hydrocal castings. They were cut down to size and carved to have the adjacent blocks pieces interlock together. This made for a mo

stly invisible wall. I then filled in any obvious cracks with Hydrocal and re-carved the blocks and joints.
You may have noticed in previous post that I had filled in the joints with excessive Hydrocal. This was intended as it allowed me to blend every block together.

Using the scrap pieces I ended up with two distinct colour of wall sections, one pure white and the other was cast with a light grey Hydrocal. This made the blending of colours the task much more difficult. The wall on the left of the images were white and the ones on the right were grey. I got out the "orangish" paints and randomly coloured blocks, I did this with brown and other earth tones I could get my hands on without leaving my seat.

I then washed the white wall with a few layers of Black India ink wash, followed by a few washes of a brown IPA wash. Then more Black wash. This was repeated on the grey side, but to lesser degree until the two sections look acceptable.

The last step detail the wall a bit more. I lightly washed a 50/50 mix of water and white glue on the bricks and blew fine light grey ballast agains the wall to simulate sea life. I then hilled some sand against the wall to show the bottom of the harbour nearer to shore. A light green olive chalk was added to give a feeling of more algae.

Eventually I decided that the retaining wall was too high and filled if down to add a series of cap stones later.

[MartyO]

While I was getting bored of retaining wall work, I decided to add a  mini-scene on the road toward the Shipyard pit. 

I grabbed stuff removed from the old layout and creatively (hmm) built a small scene where excess old stuff from the Shipyard was dumped. I run down shed was added to be the main centre of attention and the other stuff just seemed to just collect there over time. 

[MartyO]

I "loved" doing the harbour retaining was so much I decided to do another one since I was on a roll.

This retaining wall took a bit of time to figure out because I did not have any scraps that would fit or look good there. I could have done a brick or rail tie one, but that just did not feel right. So off to a local train show where I found a tool man who had wall sections that were not perfect and priced very cheap, $3.5 for a 3x6 section.

I cut them down to height and pattern matched the ends to form a continuous wall. I do use Dab chalking to glue the Hydrocal cation to foam as it sticks well to foam and dries in a few hours.

What is with these bright white castings? Tons of black wash IPA wash and brown washes to get the colour base looking right. After fiddling around with water diluted black craft paint, grey chalks, and white highlights it finally came together. It is good enough for now, but will be tweaked later, maybe.

As you can see it was the same issue with some sections of the wall white and the other grey. Dang! 

[MartyO]

Now for something totally different!

The rocky shore needs some drift wood. All rock shores deserve to have a bit of washed up tree stumps, logs and eventually seaweed (at sometime later).

I have been thinking how to do this for years, ok only a couple of days, how it could be done. While I was walking around the garden I noticed that our Weigela bush should be trimmed this spring. As I looked at the branches the tree stumps were staring me right in the face. So I snipped off a branch, it need it be done anyway, and started to image how to get scale size trees from this branch.

The first things was to remove the small thin flower sections. these could be used as driftwood. The main stem sections were cut to be used a drift logs. Then the part of the main branch from where the flower stems come from were trimmed close as possible the branch nodes. The flower stem stubs would be the root ball of the tree stump and the other size would be the tree trunk, cut to various lengths.

After scraping off the loose back and dirt/dust the drift wood began to take shape. I put them n the toaster oven at 250C for 1 hour to dry out the stems and then soak them in black/brown IPA wash.

Using Allen's clear glue they were added to the rocky shoreline. They will get more attend just before the water is added.

[MartyO]

Here are the rest of the images.

[MartyO]

Have you had enough of my posts?

Well, hold on to your hats as this is going to be a ride. Just kidding it is just build a Hydrocal background building with a smokestack to attach to the distillery.

Again, everything used in the building of his structure was stuff I cast or had bought years ago and was determined to find a use for. Let's get started.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do, but was not too sure if it would fit to look right.

In the casting pile, I had an end wall and a couple broken pieces of wall from failed castings. I cut the side walls to be the depth that looked right. Using Super Glue I added the side walls to the end wall, trying to make everything square and plumb. Yikes, it was a challenge as the casting bottoms flared out a bit has there was no defined straight wall. ok, it looks ok, I guess.

It came to mind maybe I could use a side wall made from the scraps of the distillery build to build the side wall. That was a bust, it literally broke, so that was a no-go. I need to add interest to the end wall, so I did manage to carve out a small window and slap in a window lying around.

[MartyO]

Now to see how the smokestack would attache to structure in a reasonable way.

So after what seemed 100 tries, I managed to decide on a wall mounted smoke flue that would go into the smokestack. This was, again scrap Hydrocal, glued together with a plastic brick patterned card and shaped to the slope and angle of the smokestack. 

The wall was then carefully scratched out to insert the flue, to make a better boat and make it look like it came through the wall rather than on the wall.

[MartyO]

Some of the challenge with this structure is to get the colour right to make it look like it was build in the same era the distillery was built.

So the flue was brick, so it had to be the same colour as the smokestack; no brainer.

I did drill a hole into the flue section and the smokestack so I can pass wiring through it and glue the smokestack all together properly.

The structure itself a bit more of a task. So it was back to Black IPA, browns, etc.

The roof of the structure had to look like the distillery, luckily I still had the scraps from the distillery built, pays to save everything. I put on some card stock roof and front fascia and then went through the process of gluing the slate colour roofing in place. This is where my very shaky hands were the biggest problem.

I did some clean up of the overhanging roofing and painted the fascia black and re-colour the walls.

Then it was time to cleanup the workbench and think about how to proceed,
 

[MartyO]

Meanwhile what I figure out what to do with the smokestack I sketched in how automative and truck traffic whole move through the diorama.

It will come into the diorama from the right near the shipyard, travel along the harbour wall cross the tracks into the industrial area where the distillery is and a future custom ITLA brick building of some sort. 

The waterfront structures will face the harbour backing onto the railroad behind them.

Enough posting for this month.

[Zephyrus52246]

Your work with "odds and ends" is amazing.  Great coloring on all the stonework.   My question is, with the white and grey castings, why not just spray paint them all white or grey to have the base colors the same?

Jeff

[MartyO]

Spray painting changes the absorption of stains and such. I've done that in the past and the depth goes away and looks funny. Hydrocal's beauty is in its surface.

[deemery]

These pre-assembled shingles look pretty good, both the wood and the slate versions:  https://www.northeasternscalelumber.com/products/shingles/ho-scale-shingles.html  The only problem is if you need a run that is -wider- than the pre-assembled panels.  

dave

[MartyO]

Dave,

I have a couple of those and was saving them for a larger roof. I found them interesting and waiting for the perfect structure to use them.

[deemery]

Years ago, I was able to buy unassembled sheets of the slate colored shingles so I could produce larger roofs on my factory/mill buildings.

dave