Four Square Seasons Project

     Four Square Seasons: Part Fall

Its time to use this site, create some blog posts to go with each long form video so I guess I will start here. 

Welcome to the Four Square Seasons diorama: Part Fall. This project came from a idea my wife had, a diorama based on the season. I took this idea and applied it to four square feet so each season gets its own square foot. I was planning to do each season from start to finish but quickly realized there was some base stuff that I had to do across the board, pun intended. 

I started out with 2in pink foam smuggled from Carson City Nevada as the Bay Area doesn't seem to need insulation. This was covered by Sculptamold after carving and shaping. This also had the unintended consequence of warping the 2in foam. That was not something I ran into with my NMRBO build which was sandwiched 1in foam.  

I needed to do all the base foam, paint(you never see this) and texturing before I could start on any section of the diorama. 

I use dirt from outside with a little bit of tile grout added to the dirt. I also used roots of weeds collected with the dirt for tree roots later in the project. 

Once I got the base terrain work done it was on to the fall season square foot.

I decided that I would like to have animals visible so I made a deer path running across the diorama. Running from the back to the front is a dryish seasonal drainage, and being that this is late fall I figure I will add a little gloss ModgePodge to simulate water. 

After coming up with the lay of the land I started to cover the upper landform with static grass from Woodland Scenics. I mainly went with 2mm grass in fall colors. I then used Silflorettes Autumn Buffalo Grass tufts to add some visual differentiation.

After that I layed the track using Liquid Nails Project Adhesive on the roadbed foam. Now it is time for ballast. I use Arizona Rock and Mineral UP ballast in small HO scale. Once this was done I finished up the static grass and tufts around the track making sure to keep the deeper part of ditch clear. 

Next comes some of the Walthers tufts from my NMRBO entry supplies and the venerable ScenicsExpress Super Leafs in Aspen Yellow and Rusty Orange. 

At this stage things are looking a little vertically challenged, its time for some super trees!

I looked for some scale aspen trees but couldn't find any that were not eternally out of stock or the wrong leaf color so I went with the tried and true SuperTrees by Scenic Express. I used the fall colors and aspen super leaf. I painted the stems white and added some black streaks to simulate the black stripes you see on quaking aspen trunks.

With the trees done its time for a few more greebles like deer and some fallen trees. Then with a little bit of black paint on the facia the diorama is done. 

A herd of deer crossing from fall to winter.

And with that the fall square foot of the diorama is completed. Stay tuned for winter, this should be interesting.