The next meeting will be held on November 7th – AMPS starting at 6pm and the IPMS Toronto portion starting at 7pm.  Ying Louis will be conducting another of his informative seminars, this time focusing on the subject of preparing and painting of urban scenes for dioramas.  Below you can find an introduction to the subject:

“What ever the medium (paint) you use I can never stress the use of primer to prime your surface. This will always give you the best surface to paint upon. Look at and study similar scenes in real life! Go outside and walk the streets. Observe the side walks, the street lamps, and the street furniture. Details are what makes the scene and gives it character.

In general it is always a point when you use a base and not think the word LINEAR. It detracts from an image by presenting everything at 90 degree perpendicular angles. A composition or layout is best if you approach each element at a 45 degree angle of presentation. So plan your base with a frame and work it through with all the elements including your model.

Know your elements like the centre piece model and figures for example. Placement and understanding is key to composition and to allow the viewer the most pleasing part of your display.  One point I will make here is that, if you don’t see it don’t paint it, this will save you time.

OK now onto painting after the primer and locating the elements you can commence to paint it with base colours. You have a choice being at your comfort to choose either acrylic or enamel paints, just be aware to allow a 24 hour dry cure time for the paint. This will give resilience to the following detail painting.

Detail painting I preach that we should never do anything part way!  Being that we do so much for our models, our display will never match or give justice to your model. We must give all elements 100 per cent of our skill painting and detail efforts, work it, paint it, and dress it up! What a major method I love to use is oil paint wash, this enhances the shadows of your details of the display. This requires a clear gloss coat, allow 24hrs for it to cure before allowing the application of oil wash to settle in all the recesses of your display.  Use a odourless mineral spirit to help dilute your wash. Try to use either a dark brown or dark green to perform your shadows.  These two colours will give a warm tone to the shadows and help this to look natural.  If you use a black this will grey down the base colours and give you a rather dull and non flattering colour to your base.  Highlights too can be added being to use a light yellow to add colour emphasis by dry brushing the colour to the upper surfaces of your base.  Like black if you use white as your highlight it will cause it to grey as well.  Oil paints are delayed cure paints naturally due to oil content, but this delayed dry allows you to blend smoothly the colours making it look great.  Afterwards the oil may dry with a shine to them, this you can dull the shine with dull coat sprays.  Further ideas like oil spills, algae growth, bits of vegetation like chip foam can all be added as further detail ideas. Using of pigments to display dirt and other ideas to further enhance your detail work all work their magic to your display.  With each successive step you will find your display gradually growing darker and more realistic.

Other elements to be added to an urban scene are obviously street garbage. Cans, bottles, paper, are many forms of garbage. Street furniture like signs, lights, lamp posts, and fences are ideas to include.  Park street benches, mail boxes, also are great street items to add.  All the above mentioned items are here to add and enhance the urban scene you wish to create.  As you include them I again stress detail paint them and add accessory details as much as possible.

So there it is my repetitious thoughts are to give it your 100 per cent and detail all your elements and give it the best of your skills.