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Part 3: Foam Diorama Tutorial: Creating Terrain right on the foam

Doing Terrain on your foam is a snap and won't take long at all. First you paint with base colored paints the general terrain features. In this case the grass is all green and the walking path is brown. You can use any terrain color you want. It will depend on what look you are trying to achieve. Green, brown, gray and blue are common base colors. You can start sprinklin terrain textures on it while it is still wet but I prefer to let the paint dry then spray the surface with a scenic cement. Or white glue that is watered down in a 50/50 mix of glue and water.

Then you sprinkle on your fine terrain textures. When doing diorama terrain you always start with the finest textures first. Once you have covered the whole surface with a layer of texture you should spray it again with a thin coat of scenic cement or glue mix. This will lock it down in place.

I put my textures in a wide variety of spice shakers. This way I can shake it evenly onto the surface. This picture shows me applying rougher texture. This texture is just a little coarser than then fine textures.

Next we work our way up to coarser textures and I am going to be applying small groups of bushes and shrubs so I place small dabs of glue then press the texture right into it to form the rough terrain.

After all the shrubbery is complete we continue to the larger terrain features and place small trees. Finally we place the large trees - gluing them right to the terrain.

Trees can be a challenge because the foam makes it difficult for them to stand upright while the glue dries. I overcome this by using small wires (bicycle spokes) on them. This holds them in place. Once dried I just remove the wires.

My Terrain looks great! Make sure when you make your terrain that you use lots of scenic cement spray and coat everything real well. This will lock it in place and the scenic cement dries clear so you won't see it at all.

Some More Resources on my site:

• I have a video about this Diorama (it comes with a one minute clip of me playing the video game I made based on the diorama
• How to make trees tutorial
• The Diorama Making Tutorial
• Back to the beginning of this tutorial
• Foam and foam working tools at Amazon.com (I have a page of products here on this site)