Redoran Hut Diorama - a Gift for my Sister
On Discovering Morrowind
My older sister and I discovered Morrowind back in 2005 when my friend bought me a copy for my tenth birthday (one of the Big Bytes collections games). I was a bit too young and lacked the patience and skill to understand the game's mechanics, so I mostly ran around as a level one khajiit, getting shanked by shady mudcrabs.
The 'Big Bytes' version of Morrowind I was gifted for my tenth birthday
My sister is a few years older though, and to me it seemed like she mastered the game. Most of my memories of Morrowind's quests and story were experienced vicariously, watching her play as a Telvanni Mage – always playing as a Breton because their magicka resistance meant they could wear the Boots of Blinding Speed without being blinded. I loved hearing her tell me about the Thieves Guild storyline and their clandestine conflict with the Fighters Guild. I watched her be named 'Hortator' and defeat Dagoth Ur beneath Red Mountain.
She kicked ass.
My First Diorama
This was my first diorama. Previously I had only worked with scale miniatures, painting my Warhammer 40,000 'Word Bearers' I'd found the works of Deloto online and had the idea of making a diorama for my sister's birthday. As well as selling me a Redoran Hut and some Ashlands flora sculptures, they were kind enough to throw in a few spares as well when I reached out to them.
Assembling the Diorama
I wanted to paint the sculptures myself so I'd asked Deloto for just the plain sculptures. Using a large round Games Workshop base, I started by sculpting the landscape using Milliput and gluing the hut, urns, scathecraw and trama root down. I applied some fine gravel and sand with PVA, then primed it all with Citadel 'Wraithbone' spray.
First layer of Milliput applied for the landscape
The diorama primed with Citadel 'Wraithbone'
Painting
To get the colours right, I used Remiros' Intelligent Textures as the basis and assembled the texture images into a gallery to act as my Ald-Ruhn Colour-Palette.
I really love Citadel 'Constrast Paints' (though I've yet to try their derivatives, such as Army Painter's 'Speed Paints') as a way for quickly building up shadows and highlights. They are incredibly versatile Paints – when thinned down extensively with medium, they act as fantastic glazes and filters, making for smooth colour transitions. I applied multiple glazes of thinned down 'Skeleton Horde' Contrast Paint to add depth and smooth colour transition to the hut. To get the textured, worn, carapace-like appearance of the hut I stippled highlights on, and added darker shadows using 'Cygor Brown' to create pock-marked recesses in the stone.
For the ashlandic landscape, I wanted to capture the red and purple undertones. At first glance the ashlands just appear, well, grey, but there's more to it than that. Even in-game, the ash-storms that billow from Red Mountain are an ochre colour. Over the wraithbone basecoat, I selectively applied heavily diluted washes of red and purple contrast paints to parts where I'd made the glued sand finer. Once applied, I would rinse my brush and, leaving a bit of water on the brush, then featherd out the edges to create a smooth blend so the red and purple did not appear to be 'blotches' of colour.
Over the top of the undertones I drybrushed multiple layers of grey, working up to lighter shades for the most raised surfaces. In-between I applied diluted washes of black and dark-brown. It was easy to lose the red and purple undertones during this, so I had to re-do them a couple of times.
First layer of Milliput applied for the landscape
The diorama primed with Citadel 'Wraithbone'