Ready for the diorama! (Patreon)

My friends, first of all, I'm sorry for dropping this on you in its finished state - the time is getting kinda tight because a project like this takes more than I anticipated (but it's understandable, I should've known better), and as many of you might've noticed, I'm getting really behind the schedule 😅 So I kinda force-power-steamrolled through the finishing process to get the house done ASAP. 

Let's talk some cool tips first... I found a great trick for weathered wood. You paint the wooden planks with a rather thick black paint and then wet-blend all the various tones on top of that. Then you scrape the woodgrain with a hobby blade which will reveal the black base coat. Boom, quick and authentic results! 

Second trick: the windows and doors were finished using the same method, the only difference was that instead of wet blending, every paint was drybrushed. And of course, there was no scraping. This is the only place where I used enamels for a pin wash and the rust tones. The glass was made from acetate foil (actually a packaging from the Masterclub tracks) and it's so easy to work with! Cracks were simply scribed with a blade from the inner side and everything was superglued together. 

Third: moss is awesome! And you need only 3 paints for it. You start with the Woodland Scenics fine turf sprinkled over PVA glue and then give it a heavy wash of Khaki Grey. While it's still wet, you add random washes of Golden Olive here and there, and finish it off with some Black Brown in a few places. 

Golden Olive was also brushed on the planks, rocks and bricks. It helped to distinguish the greyish wood from the stones, because before that, the out building was just a mass of grey. I kinda feel like I overdid the moss on the walls, but on the other hand, I did it primarily to blend in the house with the upcoming groundwork. There will be a lot of grass and plants around it, so the mossy deposits will make it all more integrated. 

And now, let's get back to the beginning of this post. I'm becoming convinced that if we want to undertake projects like this in the future, I'll have to do something about the video schedule. Something like - keep the weekly uploads for things that are manageable (which applies to most stuff) and take the occasional break when something is taking longer and it wouldn't make sense to split it into multiple parts. For example, I was 99% sure I'll skip a week for the diorama video because there's simply so much work ahead of me, but it's gonna be December and Christmas, and that's probably the only part of the year when I don't want to take away the Friday video from you... so I'll come up with something, probably a video about making a cobblestone road 😁 But yeah, in the long run, we'll have to figure something out, because it's projects like these when time is really killing my inspiration and will to do more than on the previous project... and enthusiasm is quickly turned into stress, that's just a small cherry on top 🤣 So yeah, I'll have to figure something out. One idea I had was Patreon livestreams for the "empty Fridays". Either just us chatting or me livestreaming my workbench. Be it working on the current project, or doing something specific for a live stream. I can totally imagine doing a small section of a derelict house "live" 😁