Hello,
I have been testing and prepping for a new diorama and am looking at solutions for a earth/dirt texture. I have been perfecting a mix of earth made from real dirt, Elmer’s glue, Future, and water.
What are solutions you guys have for diorama dirt?
Thank you
Hello!
That’s a tricky one. For one, you didn’t say what scale the diorama is supposed to be. But in 1/35 and smaller, if you put “real dirt” in the mix the grain might look too coarse. At scale you need something really fine. I would recomment some filler intended to fill imperfections in walls - house renovating stuff. It’s nice and fine and after you apply it you have some time to work with it - emboss some footprints or tire/track marks, and after it dries you get the right texture and you can paint the ground the right colour - that can also be used on vehicles or buildings to blend them in.
I have used similar stuff here:
http://www.vietnam.net.pl/M55mod3en.htm
Hope it helps, have a nice day
Paweł
Thank you Paweł,
I plan on building a 1/72 KV-2 diorama, much like the one Plasmo did in his video here: https://youtu.be/4P5GSDNpExQ
I see what you mean in terms of grit. My dirt mixture had quite a bit of sand sized particles in it. I will give wall patch a try for the diorama! I’m going to try to mix it in with some water as it seems a little stiff to work with out of the container. I had it sitting around for a few years!
I have only made dirt once as a base. I just took some sand and mixed it with drywall compound. Once it was dry I went over it with pigment. The nice thing about using that pigment was that I found that only a pinch was needed when diluted with water. I’d be surprised if I had to use more than 1/2 thimble full to color it. As far as scale I suppose it is fairly close.
M54A2 by Glenn Hanson, on Flickr
I use foam as a base than coat it with drywall mud and paint to the color of earth i want. This gives the appearence of bare earth and you can add grass, trees, shrubbery or anything else to it.
I use Celluclay for all my diorama’s, both 35th and 72nd. As Pawel says, useing real dirt will be out of scale. With the celuclay i add paint when i mix it, there by saving haveing to paint it later and if i ned to drill into it, its still the same colour. It goes down rough but can be smoothed down for more compact areas.
A dusty apperance can be implied by adjusting the colour of the base and by useing pigments on the vehicle or buildings. If i am doing a more arid scene, such as a desert, i add very fine sand to the mix.
I’m with Bish on this one; I use Celluclay. I’ve never had any problems with it and coloring is easy since its a flat white canvas. Good luck.
Beautiful work on that quad 50 Pawell. Nailed the colors on the M16’s too.
I’ve also seen individuals use tile grout in 1/35th scale and smaller. They have mixed it with air drying compounds to give it the proper scale appearance.
All good ideas above. I like using Durhams water putty. It’s cheap and easy to work with. Dries fast and colors easily with craft paints. Can be mixed with a little Elmers for extra tack and depending on the desired texture, fine sand , ground foam, or saw dust can be mixed for dirt and crushed kitty litter can be mixed in for rubble or rocky terrain.
TL;DR: Use plaster, sawdust, water, future, PVA glue, and black\brown acrylics to make some good dirt and terrain. Do not use real dirt.
So I have done some experimentation since I made my initial post…
The idea of using real dirt was a fail in the long run. Sure, it sorta makes sense to use dirt to emulate model dirt and terrain but it was messy and did not look great. Essentially, I mixed dirt, water, PVA glue, and future to make the mixture. It applied fine, but as some said, the texture is rough and is probably too heavy for 1/35 and smaller. You can decide from the pictures. The cons seem to outweigh the pros. I had to sift through dirt outside here in Florida which is a wet, muggy, and swampy land. It took some time to get dirt that was fine enough to my standards. Secondly, dirt smells and has a bunch of crap in it. I got a headache by just smelling the final mixture. I left some mixture in a little jar and the glue seperated from the dirt and formed a jelly at the top while the dirt was rock hard at the bottom as shown by the first image. The product has to be used immediately.
With this being a fail, I looked elsewhere. I credit David Damek from PLASMO as the inspiration for my idea. I mixed sawdust, plaster, water, and some black and brown acrylics together and it made a much nicer looking Earth. I did not add future to it but I bet it would look much more like mud when added. Specifically, I used DAP’s Dry Mix Plaster of Paris. Ultimately, I perfer this powder over premade drywal mud becuse you get more actual plaster for less money. I filled a 5 gallon bucket with sawdust from the lumber workers at my local home improvement store, and I was set. The final product was much nicer and less granular than the dirt product as shown in the third image. It reminds me of how Vallejo’s dirt looks. The only improvement I would make is to add some PVA glue.
That’s a Luke Towen favorite (mind, he also uses garden soil that been put through a sice grinder, too).
I want to remember Shep Payne recommending the fine stuff found in street gutters, aver oven baking it (to kill any organics), and runing it through fine sieves.
I am a bit leary of anything organic in adio as I am of pure cast lead (“lead disease” is a real thing–where the lead oxidizes for no obvious reason and just crumbles away).