Month: March 2022

Faithful readers know that work on the Citroen 11CV that’s my third diorama’s centerpiece was completed some time ago. This post covers how I’ve wrapped up the next “big piece,” the diorama’s base. Doing so meant creating the ticket office and entryway of this Parisian Deutsches Soldatenkino (“German Soldier’s Cinema”).

First up was the ticket office, which I constructed of the same light cardboard utilized for the building itself. I cut out a window for the ticket seller, scored the cardboard and folded back the side and top extensions.

The bracing you see made the ticket box retain its shape, once I’d glued it in place. A piece of material from the copious scrap box (suitably dirtied by being rubbed with graphite) served as window glass.

Next on the docket? Doors through which patrons would enter and depart from the building. The addition of cardboard door hinges and handles, plus windows, add to the illusion of actual doorways.

Poster boxes are displayed to either side of the entrance. The one to the left is for an actual 1944 German production, which was in circulation at the time of Paris’s liberation. The right hand box publicizes a weekly newsreel that propagandized the war effort, from ’39 to ’45.

This perspective shot illustrates how I’m preparing for the final scene, once I have assembled and painted the diorama’s figures, putting them and the automobile in their places.

Stay tuned as I turn my attention to these elements of the diorama, won’t you? As always I would be delighted to hear your opinions regarding how the project is progressing. Thanks!

Viewers may remember that my second diorama (see the posts regarding Modeling 2.0) featured a section of pavement, whose bricks I painstakingly set, one-by-one. I didn’t mind the work and I was pleased with the result. This time around I decided to some save time by purchasing a slab of resin with a cobblestone pattern. Once I’d primed the surface and brushed a reddish acrylic wash over it, it came out looking just fine.

One funny thing is, the resin came with a sewer cover – which I promptly misplaced. After scratching my head over how to replace the cover, I came across an English six pence piece (dating from 1956): it was a perfect fit!

To either side of the cobblestones I set plaster of paris sidewalks that I purchased online. Painted with thinned feldgrau-color acrylic and dirtied up with whitish acrylic powder, the result resembles the urban scene I intend for the diorama. More on that as things progress . . .

The diorama’s background will be a French movie theater. During the Occupation it became a “Soldatenkino,” a cinema that was restricted to German military personnel. I am constructing the building from thin pastry box cardboard. The theater’s ticket office and doors will plug the big hole in the center.

Here is a view of the building’s “interior.” You can see how much bracing was required to stiffen the walls and make the edifice stand up straight. After the entrance and ticket office are in place the interior won’t be visible and I will paint the interior flat black.

It won’t be long before I put up the next post about this project, so stay tuned!