Diorama: More Base, More Weapons

More diorama work today. I started by trying out the airbrush for the back wall. This is the other side of my test piece.

I had a lot of trouble with my airbrush today. The base color I was using was too thick, I think, to go through it well. When I finally got it unclogged, it still wasn't working great. But I went back with thinner paint, and got it going well enough. I'm probably going to try using the airbrush for at least base coating the whole thing, and probably the faded out color on the back wall as well. I think I'll use a lighter color for that, though. I like the fade out, but what I've got there is a bit too much.

Then I went on to the weapons. I removed the monster hand from the club and started painting the swords.

I also did some prep work on my actual base. I put in the grooves (fewer of them than on the test piece) and wet the piece down to raise the grain. I'll sand it back down smooth, and then when I put the water-based paint on it It shouldn't raise the grain again, or at least not much. I did learn an important lesson from this: Wetting the wood swells the fibers, so I should have done that before putting in the grooves. I had to re-do the grooves after wetting the wood down, because the swelling of the fibers meant the original grooves were lost. Lesson for next time.