Tiger Diorama
- Details
- Published on Mon, 5 Oct 2009
A little retro modelling, 90's style
I have built many different types of models throughout my childhood, teens and twenties on and off. My attitude was build, paint, display until broken, by myself (whilst moving house usually), parents, wife and then kids-in that order.
In my twenties I started to dabble in dioramas, as buildings and accessories became more prollifent. Only this tiger diorama survives to this day, with the exception of damaged decals and turret tracks.
In 1993 if you wanted anything special you had to travel to Manchester to the Manchester Model Shop on Deansgate, no point and click Internet ordering in those days! Whilst visiting one Saturday afternoon, I was browsing the magazine section, when I noticed some magazines titled “ Verlinden Productions Magazine”. I browsed through some of them and was utterly shocked by the brilliance of the painting of the kits, figures and buildings-they all looked REAL. Gone had mine-and others (Tamiya model magazine for example)-technique of one coat of paint and that’s it, and enter the ultra realistic world of “dry brushing”, “highlighting”, “weathering”, “washing” and “shading”.
This really motivated me to try and emulate the excellence of what I was seeing in these magazines. I started to copy Mr. Verlinden`s techniques, the result of which is the Tiger diorama.
The dio was done in 1993/1994 (can’t remember which year exactly), and consists of a 1/35th scale Tamiya Tiger and Tamiya figures, and a Verlinden productions building with additional Verlinden bricks and poster accessories.
The cobbled street base was made from plastic cobbled sheets, painted grey, shaded and highlighted using Humbrol paint.. The building was painted grey, shaded and highlighted using paint, with brown and black pastel chalks, sometimes ground down into a powder and brushed on. The sign, background, door, floorboards, joists and window frames were made from balsa wood, painted brown and weathered. The window glass was clear plastic sheeting, washed with brown to give it that dirty look. The second floor wallpaper was my wife’s Marks and Spencer`s wage slip reversed side and weathered with pastels! The “Ortskommandatur” sign was done by a work college on a word processor, stuck onto a brown painted piece of balsa, and weathered with pastels.
The rubble consists of Verlinden bricks, polystyrene and Milliput blocks with the Verlinden bricks sometimes incorporated. I also spent a lot of time picking up fine debris from the around patio of our first house, and gluing it to the base using PVA.
The Tiger is more or less out-of-box except for the Zimmerit, which was done using a thin coat of Milliput, and given that layered appearance using a small hacksaw blade broken in half! The radio aerial was melted and stretched sprue-stunk out the kitchen much to the annoyance of my wife! Painting was done with a Badger airbrush, which was give washes of black and highlighted.
Ahhhhhhh the early nineties-how things have changed! 
Colin
