deko für wohnzimmerschrank
today i'd like to show you a project that's about these two cars. i'd like to place them in my living room cabinet, not alone but in a diorama. the diorama should have a street and a field road. everything will be greened. what is particular here is that i want it to look old. we are used to having everything clean, pretty and new, but this street will be really dirty and old, with grease spots and dirt. the first step is obvious: draw in the lines of the street. a simple trick: take a heavy object, press the ruler against it and bend it and i have the first course of the street. and now i draw the parallel line.
the street will be about 6 centimetres wide. 3 cm for each lane, that would be about 3 metres in reality. now i just press the ruler against my sweater - i only have two hands - and bend it according to the marks. and that's already the street. then i set the field road here. that's how it should be later. special about this diorama is that i want to make a small ditch. so it's not only a flat level, but with a ditch at the side of the road. i'll cut the indentations into the wood on both sides.
now i'll use a chisel to cut out the ditch. to avoid injuries, i'll clamp the board to the table. and i'm ready to go. for the baseplate, i'm using 10 mm of birch plywood. with the chisel i cut 3 mm into the wood on each side. the wood is very soft and easy to handle. now it's time for the finish of the ditch, i'll use normal sandpaper. i'll just sand it a little into shape. i just move back and forth and the result comes on its own. the board is prepared now.
i'll use brown as a basic colour and then light grey for the street the first time. i'll colour it light grey twice, once before and once after the intermediate sanding. after that comes the ageing process. i'll colour the areas brown that will be green later and sprinkle some fine sand into the wet paint to imitate soil. i'll knock off the remaining sand and paint the street light grey for the first time. i mix the street colour on cardboard,
with white, black and very little brown. then i apply a thick layer of paint so the wood grain can't be seen anymore. after the first application follows an intermediate sanding in order to make brushstrokes and wood grain disappear. afterwards i dab a sponge onto the wet paint to achieve a rough surface. after i marked the street with a pencil and determined the width, i'll dab with the brown colour up to the pencil marks and sprinkle more sand on it. dabbing has the advantage that there aren't any straight brushstrokes, instead it appears rough and broken.
so the transition is like it is in reality: rough and not a straight line. best for this work is a bristle brush and use a fine quartz sand for the soil. for the street marking i'll use a fine brush with white dispersion paint. the street is supposed to look old anyway, so it doesn't matter if the line isn't perfect because freehand drawing is an art form that not anyone can master. then it is sketched with a pencil and painted with a brush afterwards. hold one end of the ruler with your stomach, the other end with your hand. these bugs again!
these will be small markings. when painting the lines, make sure that paint is only on the tip of the brush. wipe the brush off in between, so it's always a fine line. it's easier if you support yourself with the ball of the hand while painting. now we have a nicely prepared new street. next time i'll show you how to make a real street out of it with potholes and roadway damage.