First of all. I'm new here on this website and this is my first post. I registered because I'm currently working on a diorama which takes up a lot of spare time! Maybe i'll be making a progress thread if you guys would like so.

But first of all I would like some advice from the people with experience!
I use Styrodur foam to craft walls and basing materials for the diorama. Which is great stuff because it's soft and durable at the same time, not to mention lightweight. But here's the thing, I want to create a stonewall like texture from it and I can't seem to get it right. Here are 2 attempts using Vallejo white stone & grey pumice (after test painting them).
This was a watered down Grey Pumice. Not so great combination with Primer spray can.

This is 2 layers of white stone.

So what do you guys think?

I suspect that at gaming distance this would look fine. It's quick, cheap, lightweight and if you can manage to put appropriate terrain of this standard on the tabletop, that puts you a step ahead of most players. However, if you want something that looks really good in photographs or up close, you're going to have to spend a lot more time and/or money.

You're asking about painting technique, but your painting looks fine - it's the texture which would need improvement. Have you tried coating the foam with a thin layer of polyfilla (aka spackling)? That can be sanded and lines scored into it. It's not quick or easy, and does depend on how firm the underlying foam is - too soft and the filler will crack and fall apart. Dagorlad's Weathertop is one of my favourite examples of how good this technique can look (although I believe he applied his filler directly onto wood, rather than foam). The other option is casting - either a whole wall section or individual blocks (e.g. using Hirst Arts).

Good luck with it, but don't rule out the option of continuing with your current method, as it's likely to mean you get to play most of your games with decent terrain, instead of just a few of your games with excellent terrain.

I took a nicely textured rock, and pushed it against the wall.
If you push hard enough, the wall will take over the texture.
You could try that and see what works best

Looks good! The paintwork looks ok, i doubt we could say much more until the texturing is more subtle. Bernado has some good advice - it is obvious in the second picture that the texturing is letting you down. Get a rock, or even better, get some aluminium foil, scrunch it up and press it over the whole lot. You should also stipple with the brush a little bit (dab it up and down instead of the regular painting strokes.)

Picture 1 looks better with the grey pumice as it is clearly grainy. Some people prefer to carve the rock channels after coating it with filler/spackle/pumice/whitestone so give this a go and see what you think.

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I use a polyfilla on top of foam and when partially dry you can press scrunched up tin foil on it to create a pattern. Then when dry etch the brickwork in place.
When painted up it can look like this
viewtopic.php?f=50&t=16695&start=440

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Thanks a lot everyone for the comments. They've been helpful!
I picked a rock and pressed in the foam. Here's a experiment with 4 different takes on the 2 textures + the rock pressing.


Personally I like the grey pumice+watered white stone the best, it's not too rough but still nicely textured. The white stone works too much like a filler, you can't really see the stone pressing.

I'll take a look at the polyfilla soon!