The resin parts: The base and wall are designed to go together with little if any clean up. Because of the weight of the wall, you will probably want to drill and at least pin the street and wall together, or better yet, drill and screw the pieces. If you use a wooden plaque for the display base, the screws can continue through the street piece and connect the diorama right to the wood. That’s all for the assembly. Painting and detailing: It’s advisable to coat the resin parts with a spray of primer, either from an aerosol can or airbrush. It gives your paint something to adhere to and also makes apparent all the fine surface details. I like Floquil brand paints as a primer as they’re finely ground but even VHT brand aerosol works well on these pieces and is less expensive. I have very few “hobby” paints in my inventory. I prefer to use Animators cell paints as they will stick to unprimed plastic and resin if necessary. They are produced in a broad range of colors, are very opaque so painting very light colors over dark is easy. These paints also airbrush well and because of the larger size bottles, are very economical over the long run. I also use a lot of craft paints intended for ceramic projects. These are not as opaque as I prefer, but they also airbrush nicely, have a tremendous choice of colors, are perfect for all the washes I like to put on buildings and also are extremely economical as compared to model paints. I’m even able to use these two types of paint on my figures although I am the first to admit, figures aren’t my strong suit. Because the façade is meant to have some age and disrepair to it, there are a lot of possibilities regarding color schemes. As you experiment with the tones and washes, you may find it’s almost as much fun as camouflaging a tank. Depending on the scene you depict, you can leave the building nicely weathered, or if you want more of a challenge (as I did) you can add a ghosted advertising image to add color and help with the composition of the scene. I chose to add an old Michelin image and it went on fairly easily. I printed the image at a couple of different sizes to test out what looked “right”. I cut the image out and taped it to the building. I then traced it using Saral paper, which is a transfer sheet that comes in four colors including white. It’s advantageous in that you can trace light over dark background if necessary and also color key your line work to you paint colors. As the image was taped at the top and therefore hinged, I could fold it up to check progress and also re-trace areas as paint went on and areas were obscured. With the linework showing, I painted in the areas and went back and forth with light over dark to refine the image as necessary. I also used colored pencils to show outlines and detail areas. The photos show the “clean” image and the final image after weathering. I faded the image by sanding it with 600-grit sandpaper, exposing undercoats to various levels. Go to Page 4

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