Irvine, Mat Blueprint. Model Dioramas Handbook

Dioramas are invariably associated with scale models, providing a setting or background for a completed kit, though arguably the scenery and buildings on a model railway layout is essentially, a very large diorama. The techniques and materials used are much the same whether you wish to create a landscape through which the track of a classic English branch line will run or a smaller base displaying a Hawker Hurricane being readied for take-off, a Panther tank stuck in the mud of a battlefield or a Monte Carlo Mini in the snow.
This book shows how you can create interesting dioramas irrespective as to what you are modelling. It looks at the materials required for building dioramas, primarily tools, paints and glues. Similar skills and techniques are required to create everything from simple bases that contain only a few items, to larger structures that need far more work and effort in their creation. It covers the materials that can be used to create earth, vegetation and water - from seas and oceans, to what you may find in a bucket. It also deals with landscaping, creating a miniature world as the setting for your models. The building of specific dioramas as settings for museums exhibits, architectural and educational projects is explored as are forced-perspective dioramas where, though the majority of the elements that make up a scene will be in the same scale, parts of it will not be to create the illusion of distance.

Once you have the materials and the knowledge, as the author says in his Introduction, there is really only one rule when it comes to building model dioramas, your imagination.