Dioramas
Welcome to Dioramas… the area in your SMN devoted to just that – dioramas!
Over the years we have seen some stunning dioramas, settings and bases in our Subscribers’ Gallery that are simply inspiring and a big thank you to you all for sharing your work so willingly. This area showcases just a few of them so, sit back, soak it all up and be inspired.
On a Wing and a Prayer – Steve Noble
Setting the Scene
The vignette was made with the aim of creating the suggestion that the ground and aircrew, waiting on the ground, are searching the sky for a damaged and overdue aircraft. Limping home it is flying on no more than “On a wing and a prayer”.
Construction of the Scene
To tie the action to an airfield location, the scene was set around a light anti-aircraft position. These were located around airfields employing Bren gun or Lewis guns mounts protected in sandbagged “bunkers”. The bunker came ready made from the firm Reality in Scale while the Lewis gun and mount was from Resicast. Plastic card embossed in the form of paving slabs made up the surface and a grass strip added to complete the base.
Expression
The correct choice of figures determined the mood of the scene. It is generally best to minimise what the viewer focuses on to avoid distracting the eye. The figures used were from the companies Hornet and SKP.
The WRAF officer (SKP) was already positioned looking skyward and used as a stock figure. From the same company the pilot drinking tea, was modified by lilting the head backwards.
The gunner (Hornet) was fitted with a replacement head also positioned to tilt backwards so to look skyward.
Steve N.
Other Diorama Projects
My last model built by me was nearly 50 years ago, it was probably an Airfix pocket money airplane, and the only tools were a pair of mothers nail scissors, a half squeezed tube of Bostik and some Humbrol paints that weren’t the right colours, and when finished looked like it rolled straight off the production line.
2020 saw me in 3 months furlough and 100’s of hours of YouTube watching todays modellers – an airbrush? I didn’t even know that they existed! This reignited my passion for modelling. I didn’t want to build planes or tanks so I opted for the Trumpeter Keiegslokomotiv 1:35 scale, not an easy first build but a challenge for myself. I bought all the cheapest tools and airbrush I could find (and I’m still using them) I started the build at Xmas and then decided to go full steam with a diorama so I bought a couple of schwere platforms (Trumpeter) a couple of half tracks (Tamiya) a railway wagon from MiniArt, a flak gun (Tamiya) a searchlight from AFV Club and the 8kw Generator from Dnepro models.
The builds all went well but the first models didn’t have the paint finish as I would have liked, these will be revisited and repainted in time. Until they are done I will be submitting a few images of the models I am happier with, so for now I’m showing the MiniArt railway wagon, the AFV searchlight and the Dnepro models Generator (thank you to the Lincs Aviation Centre for the YouTube video and Andrew for the images of the generator).
Tony S.
