Display Bases
With David Muscroft
1:48 Marston Mat diorama, with Airfix Spitfire F.22/24 and Airfix WW11 15cwt 4×2 GS truck
Going with my latest modelling passion of building dioramas with a view to photographing them in a ‘realistic’ fashion I teamed up the Spitfire I built some time ago and newly built Airfix WW11 15-cwt truck with the Mini Art 1:48 Marston Mat aircraft decking (49017, 2 pieces in set)
I realised when starting to build this set into a diorama that I needed to treat the Marston mat as a kit….. it’s nowhere near its potential without painting and weathering. However, I only used what was in my weathering inventory already.
Starting with checking out reference pictures on the web – mainly in black and white of course. So I had to surmise what colours to actually add to the plastic, trying to replicate the weathering which would result in a theatre of war. I chose a thin wash covering of varying intensities of Tamiya Acrylic, my mix of ‘brown gunge’ (usually used for aircraft weathering) and Gunmetal…
…using the surface of the matting itself as a rough mixing palette. Then I added occasional streaks of mid brown.