Diorama Fighting Knights in 1/72

Have you ever wanted to make a little diorama or vignette?
(Vignette is the name of a small diorama that only includes a few figures)
Here I show you how simple it is to do a small vignette out of a small piece of foam and some paper.
Well, for sure it give some storytelling if the are one or two figures included.
In this case I used two knights in 1/72 scale inspired by the movie Ivanhoe from 1982.

The base and building is made of foam, XPS 250. The roof is made of paper. Tools I used: Scalpel, scissor, file.

First of all, I designed the idea and scenery. I had some small leftovers of XPS foam used for isolation. The base of foam is 5 x 5 x 5 centimeters. I used my hot wire machine to cut the foam. The two knights in 1/72 scale is made by Valdemar Miniatures.

I used the scalpel to carve the stone pattern on the street and on the building as well for the small windows.
The file was used to make the gutter in the street.

For the roof I used paper from a package of rice. I used the scissor to make single tiles. The tiles was glued in place using white glue, (wood glue). This was a quite time consuming work.

I put small pieces of paper in the windows to cover the foam surfaces in the windows. Then I glued the roof, the building and the base together using universal transparent glue. Now it’s important to let the glue dry a couple of hours.

I primed all parts two times using a thick acrylic paint. Black for the roof and grey for the rest.

I used both acrylics and water colors. You could use almost every color for both the street and the building, as long as it looks realistic. Use a reference picture if you are unsure.

I use grey type of wall putty as mortar on my buildings. It have worked fine for many years. I apply the wall putty quite ruff, I let it dry for 2-3 minutes before I wipes the leftovers off.

Next step is to use a black/brown color as a wash on the ground, actually I used it all over the ground and building. I used 2 layers. A third layer was applied, this the with more black color.
Let the was dry for 20 minutes, then use the base colors and repaint the part you want to pop out. Then use even lighter color to add highlights.

I used small pieces of a rope to simulate dried grass. I also sprinkled a little fine earth between the ground and the building.

Of course I worked a lot to paint the final details, small dots of paint here and there. The roof was dry brushed to simulate highlights.

Last step was to add the figures. I ground and building was painted quite grey and neutral, that’s because I wanted the colorful figures to pop out.
Well, I hope you like my little vignette, for sure it was fun to build.
Cheers