Diorama with forest and stream

[OTFan]

My young son and I have been working on a small layout for a couple of years now, seen in the thread below:

https://www.nscale.net/forums/showth...776#post620776

It has been a lot of fun, but now we are running out of room way before he runs out of ideas for things to add. So, we'll work on a diorama. We watched this video from Luke Towan together where he made a diorama with a bear fishing for salmon in a river, and my son was immediately sold on the idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCZVovoGonM

So off we go. The diorama is about 5.5" by 11.5", based on nothing more scientific than the size of the scrap foam pieces it will be made from and eyeballing it. I ordered a pack of Woodland Scenics bears (they're black bears rather than brown, but we'll either paint one, or just call it good enough) and we still have some WS deer we never did use on his layout. We have some rock castings left over and made a few more over the weekend. So now we need trees. Luke Towan makes some fantastic looking ones, but we decided to go with something a little easier from this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wdSKMOV8dY

And since I'd hate to have a moose stampede this early in the project, here are the pictures of progress so far:

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[Stu]

Let there be hills and trees...

[OTFan]

Laying out the rocks in place, on some plastic to contain the mess from the next part Some rock castings were left over from previous projects, and a few new ones for this.

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And with the rocks embedded into sculptamold. That is one of his favorite parts.

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Working on the stream bed. Some WS "rock" products... maybe course ballast? I've long since lost the package. Some of it we colored, some the grey it came out of the package as. Also a little play sand, and some dark colored WS fine ballast. Full strength Elmer's glue painted on first, then sprinkled on generally from bigger/more course to smaller/finer, and then everything gets soaked with isopropyl alcohol and then diluted PVA glue. We just use an old Elmer's glue bottle for that, and adjust the top so it comes out (usually) one drop at a time.

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Coloring the sculptamold with some diluted acrylic paint, and some darker washes in the river bed:

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And the bear arrived. It should probably be a brown bear, but this will be close enough.

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[OTFan]

Continuing construction, we added a layer of grout to simulate dirt. Slightly thinned white glue spread everywhere you want it to stick, shaken from a small container covered with a piece of nylon, and then we came back later with a diluted mix of white glue, water, and isopropyl alcohol to make sure everything is thoroughly stuck.

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That also shows some more coloring in the river bed. If you check out the Luke Towan video linked in the first post here, you'll see he did not color the sculptamold river bed before adding all the rocks, sand, etc. We figured we'd try it his way... next time we'll go back to coloring the sculptamold before putting anything else down on top of it. We keep finding little white spots we missed and coming back to add more color. Oh well. Anyway, on to the trees:

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These are temporarily in place to figure out where they all go, and we'll remove them to add grass and undergrowth. We decided we needed a couple more, so here they are in progress. These are lengths of bamboo skewer, roughed up a bit with a sharp knife. The dead branches are just bits of wire, with holes drilled in the trunk and superglued in. All of it is painted brown first, then drybrushed grey.

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[OTFan]

In case anybody is curious about comparing N scale bears...

We ended up getting both the Woodland Scenics black bears, and the Preiser brown bears, both seen below. We'll use the brown bear for this. I love how fast Fifer's ships - the day after I ordered it and the mail was surprisingly fast.

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[Stu]

Could you consider using use both? Bigger further away, smaller closer to = the apparent size, or smaller further away physically to make it look even further away. Depends on the scenes, or if you want o have bear(s) in two places. Grrr...big choice!

[OTFan]

Could you consider using use both?

Sure could We also talked about using one of the brown bears that is rearing up on it's hind legs back in the trees as well. Right now the plan is just one bear plus a family of deer back in the trees (we got a WS pack of deer a year or more ago but never used it), but these plans have been known to change from time to time

[OTFan]

After finishing a few more trees and figuring out where they all would go, we removed all the trees and replaced them with numbered pegs. The trees got stuck in pieces of scrap foam with corresponding numbers by the holes.

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Makes for an odd looking forest for a while... but much easier to add ground foam, static grass, shrubs, grass tufts, and all that good stuff. Knowing where the trees are going to go lets you keep the area right around the trunks more clear, with more grass and other plant life between the trees. Oh, and borrowing from @WP&P, we used the dried contents of a used tea bag for some of the stuff under the trees. We also glued the deer family in place, and the bear is just standing there on his rock awaiting the next steps.

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[OTFan]

Since the part on land is pretty much finished, we worked on the river... which means figuring out N scale salmon. After some trial and error, the thing that seemed to work best is solder. Pinch the end with small pliers to create the tail, and use rail cutters to trim the tail and cut your "fish" to length. We used blobs of WS water effects ripples on wax paper to make little transparent columns, and more of the same to fix the columns to the bottom of the river (tried CA, but it discolored the WS ripples stuff). Hopefully it all holds when we pour the "water" (two part epoxy, coming soon... I hope...). We'll add just a little murky color to the water, so hopefully these will look suitably like fish when that's done.

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[tomcook]

Little torpedos They look really cute. I'm glad the bear isn't taking much interest in them.

You're doing great. I can't wait to see the resin in place

Here's a fun link to someone elses take on fish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WqNDoB5zL0&t=2s I don't think this one will be bear fodder !!!

[OTFan]

Here's a fun link to someone elses take on fish

Wow, that's impressive. And no, that one is probably not bear fodder!

[OTFan]

We used WS "Deep Pour" which is a two part epoxy for the water. To hold that in while it cures, we glued pieces of scrap foam along the sides and back. We then went back with the WS "Ripples" water effects stuff (same stuff we'll use on top of the epoxy later for ripples and waves) to seal the edges:

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That mostly held, though we did have a leak on one side. Fortunately that was all caught by the paper we put underneath. We didn't notice the leak right away, so I'm definitely glad we used paper underneath just in case.

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We ended up needing two pours - the first one wasn't quite deep enough, probably made worse by the leak. Anyway, after a couple of days (it can cure in 24 hours, but ours was still a little tacky so we waited longer) we pulled off the foam dam and we have a river. It is tinted with just a little acrylic paint (burnt umber, and a teal color) though you can barely tell. There are some bubbles, and most seem to be along the seam between the first and second pour. Either I messed up the second pour there, or I should have waited until the first pour was completely cured before doing the second, I don't know. Anyway, my son is still happy with the project, so I'm not going to worry about it. Here are the pictures:

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Next up will be ripples and white water on the surface.

[OTFan]

We continued to work on the river with WS water effects ripples, and adding some whitewater. We've tried a few things with the whitewater. Trying to very sparingly add a little white paint is hard enough for me... harder for a six year old, so we switched gears pretty quickly there. In the video I linked in the first post here, Luke Towan makes a paste of WS "snow" and the water effects ripple stuff. We tried that with both baking powder and baking soda... it congeals into a wax like substance too quickly to be useful. What we've done the most of is just adding a touch of white paint to the WS ripple stuff, and then dabbing that on with a disposable micro brush. That's all we did around the rock with the bear on it. Much more subtle than the straight white paint. We'll keep experimenting with this, and any suggestions are welcome.

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[el Gato Gordo]

That looks good, @OTFan. No need to go farther.

I used snow, but I found that sprinkling tiny amounts on the surface of Water Effects or Modge Podge gave me the effect I was seeking on my Alpenbahn.

[OTFan]

I used snow, but I found that sprinkling tiny amounts on the surface of Water Effects or Modge Podge gave me the effect I was seeking on my Alpenbahn.

That's a good idea, thanks.