Final Skaven Pictures

Here are the last pictures I took while building the Snitch Diorama.

The street surface was entirely sculpted from Fimo - which was a bit of an experiment as I had never used it before... I made a little press shape to make the cobbles and drain section - a piece of aluminium tube that I sharpened and shaped to give the oval shape I wanted. The shape of the flag stones were defined with a sharp sculpting tool - I found fimo pretty good for this sort of work - it doesn't have the surface tension that greenstuff has - so it's pretty easy to get sharp edges. The sewer hatch was salvaged from a Land Raider kit, with all the detail sanded flat and a couple of rivets added. I scratched and scraped the surface to give it a worn look.

The wall of the building was constructed from plasticard and balsa wood, with the window from from an old train-scale building.

The painting was fun - I wanted there to be a contrast between the colour palette of the street level and the sewer tunnel. I painted everything below street level in dark and dank colours - everything shaded down with brown and green tones with lots of stains and dark, damp patches on the walls. I also used a gloss varnish to add areas of wet shine to the walls. At street level I tried to keep everything a brighter and cleaner, so used less muddy colours for shading. I painted the shutters green to tie the two level together.

I always think there is a fine line to walk when painting dioramas - you need the scene itself to be interesting enough to give character - but not so bright as to clash with the miniatures who are on it.

Lots going on in the Studio right now, but more of that soon...

mike