My first diorama

This November I made my first diorama and presented it to the 8th 1/48 scale modellers contest organized by Tamiya's plastic model factory shop in Shinbashi.

After watching several documentaries I chose to make a winter scene with the famous T-34/67 Russian tank. I'll explain the process I followed below.

After assembling the T-34/76 (1), add a layer of oxide with acrylic colours, coat it with laquer varnish and then apply hair spray (2). Once the hair spray dries, apply the base acrylic colour (3). Soon after that, moisten the surface with water (4) to get a nice chipping effect (5).

Here is a more detailed view of the chipping effects on the upper hull and the turret.

For the base of the diorama I used a cheap plant saucer made of plastic. I created a basic shape using a polystyrene sheet, and on top of that I added a layer of air clay.

It's important to think about what you want to show in your diorama. It should be easy to understand what the characters are doing.

These small wooden tweezers glued to a stick made it easier for me to paint the figures.

To place the figures on the diorama you can attach a short piece of metal wire to the shoes and insert them into the air clay layer. The dirt on the lower hull, caterpillar and wheels was made by mixing plaster with pigments and enamel thinner.

I used real grass from the backyard. Just open a small hole and glue them with bond glue.

For the melted water I used Tamiya's transparent epoxy resin.

The snow is made with Tamiya's snow effect texture paint.

A total of 48 models were submitted. Out of them 15 models received a prize. Unfortunately mine didn't. Check previous contest winners here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.