Dioramalama

I have finally found the a usb that I can use to get photos of off my camera. It is the tiniest usb in the world - the camera is currently pressed up against the back of my laptop. I don't know who invited it or for what purpose an inch long usb cable could ever serve.

More fun stuff:

Most of my attention this week has been focused on a showbase/diorama base that I started making on a whim. I've had some Das clay sitting round since the summer that I used a tiny bit of to make some ancient sand stone type bases ages ago. I decided to throw caution to the wind and make something. Using a butter knife I started hacking lumps off of the clay. Where its foil packaging had been opened the clay had already dried out so I threw those to the side and got back to sawing like a crazy lady. Das modelling clay is nothing like normal clay and I found it hard to use to start with. It was incredibly hard and warming it was nearly impossible. I dipped my hands in water and was just about able to start shaping it.

I tried breaking it into smaller lumps I could fit in my hands, wetting it, and rolling it between my palms and pulling and pushing it out of shape to warm it up and make it more pliable. This didn't work. What happened instead is the slippery but unyielding material took the force applied by my squidging hands and shot into my eye. I promptly gave in doing this and decided to work with it as best I could as it was.

I was envisioning one of the crests you get into a rocky, uneven landscape. I mushed the clay into a vague uphill shape and used desperate force of will and poking the pieces with the butter knife to stick some of the lumps together. At this stage I didn't have an actual plan, just a sense of what I wanted. This isn't useful - in the future I'm only going to start something when I have a picture or plan to work off. Less whimsy more graph paper.

Mmm mars bars with twigs in

On campus I had been running round my department picking up bits of bark, twigs and mosses. Next time I'm going to do it around a different department: I can only imagine my lecturers walking past me while I muttered too myself scrambling through the undergrown near the building and whooping while I shoved damp moss into a doggy poo bag has not endeared my to any of them. I feel I may be attended very closely next time I have to use anything expensive in the lab.

I wiggled a couple of bits of bark a tiny twig and a nobly twig into the base to give it more texture and visual interest. I wasn't concerned about the texture of the rest of the base because it was all going to be covered by the time it is finished. By this stage the whole thing looked like a half melted ice cream monstrosity.

The moss I played on paper towels over a radiator. Drying it out means you can handle it easier, paint it, and any mud stuff attached comes off super easy. It did confuse my house mates when they came in and saw the kitchen radiator had grown moldy at the speed of light.

I spread thinned PVA glue over most of the visible modelling clay and then poured some very fine flock over it. It doesn't matter what colour it is, just the texture does. I'm using it to create an earthy texture underneath the foliage that's going to go on top. Once the glue was dry I just brushed the excess off gently and then covered everything with a liberal spread of dark brown pigment in alcohol.

While that was drying I painted the pieces of bark shadow grey. I'm going to drybrush them in normal grey colours to look like rock, but the shadow grey underneath gives it a nice undertone so it's not just boring monochrome. When both the pigment and paint had dried the whole thing was covered in thinned down sepia ink.

I added a few more details when it had dried: the stone parts have all been dry brushed up to skull white, stains have been added to the rocks. I applied a basecoat of scorched brown to the tree branch and fallen trunk. Using thinned badab black I brought back some of the contrast on the rocks that had been lost to over zealous drybrushing. 

Now I just have to wait for it to dry overnight. Once I've painted the trees up I will be able to start adding grasses and mosses. 

I don't like the rocks you can see clustered here, but I'm not going to do anything about them until more of the base has been done in case they end up fitting it. When I have the greens on it I'm going to pick out some of the plantlife strewn on the floor in some autumny colours to add more life to the piece.