Kursk Dio

Here a little update on the Kursk dio. Did some work on the commanding officer over the past evenings, still needs a bit here and there. I’ve tried to get a nice satin leather look for the belt, map-case, and gun holster

A small update...

Unfortunately I’ve had to bin the Monte Cassino dio. After reading more thoroughly up on my history, I’ve found that the scene would actually be completely historically incorrect! It has in recent years been accepted as a fact that; German paratroops didn’t take up positions in the monastery until the day after the Allied bombing of the place.

This would mean that the scene would have to depict a ruin, and I was building an intact structure…

Thus I have decided to move on another project, a small “Battle for Kursk” scene featuring a Panther and a bunch of German officers planning an attack.

Here are a few pictures of the figure painting done so fare.

More to come!

By the way I’m delighted to se a new reader of my humble little blog. Welcome Ludo, love your work!

"The Clearing" the Ardennes 44 - continued

...And the final picture

"The Clearing" the Ardennes 44 - continued

More pictures

"The Clearing" the Ardennes 44

As promised earlier, the final result of the Ardennes dio ”The Clearing”. I apologize for the bad lighting on the pics, but this is the best I can do at the moment.

Monte Cassino Dio - Buildings & figures

At the moment I’m working on the building for the Monte Cassino dio. I’ve spent a few days doing the rough outlay of the dio in foam board. I still need to do the arches, roof, and columns.

The pictures show a bit of the detail work on the on the walls and tile floors. The cork bricks will be applied to all walls. The gaps will be filled with plaster, representing the mortar.

All the tile floors are plaster casts, into which I carved the individual floor tiles.

I’ve done some of the initial work on the Fallshirmjäger figures. These are from Dragon’s “Monte Cassino Defenders” kit. I made a few improvements on the bread sac, adding new “Green Stuff” straps and filled out the gaps between the sac and the figure to make it look more realistic.

Monte Cassino Dio

The Ardennes dio (The Clearing) is done! I still need to do a few good pictures of the final result; they’ll be up soon.

I’ve already started my next project, a Monte Cassino, Italy scene. Featuring German Fallschirmjägers...

Here are a few pic’s of my general idea.

Ardennes Dio - Almost done.

Work on the trees is completed. It was a bit tedious work, but these trees play a major role in the scene!

As mentioned in earlier posts, the trees are made from balsa wood, small birch twigs, and moss. I pull the moss apart till I have single “straight” strands of moss. These strands are then glued on one by one using superglue. I start out by placing one long strand across the full length of the branch, then I glue strands on the side starting with two longer ones at the base of the branch and making them shorter and shorter as I make my way to the tip of the branch.

After having made a sort of rough “fish bone” structure on the branch, I start adding smaller and shorter pieces of moss to break the planned, rather stiff pattern and give the branch a more “chaotic” and natural look.

I gave the green parts a few sprays of darker greens with the airbrush followed by a coat of matt varnish.

After a few days of drying I started applying snow on the treetops. I brushed on heavily deluded white glue with a medium large brush and then sprinkled on a layer of Woodland Scenic’s snow. Each branch got two layers of snow, letting the glue dry completely between each application.

I finished the groundwork as well. This is a winter scene set in December ’44, so it will eventually be covered with snow. The ground was made from a concoction of plaster, sand, flowerpot dirt, a bit of static grass, a few drops of brown and black acrylic paint, and finally MIG acrylic resin to ad strength.

Now all I need to do is apply the snow, and the thing is done!

Ardennes Dio - Update on The SS

Still needs a bit of work here and there...

Ardennes Dio - Update on the Sherman

I gave the Sherman a final coating of clear varnish, now I only need to paint and weather the tracks and add snow and winter mud to the tank.

Ardennes Dio - Trees…trees and more trees!

I had the time to glue a few twigs together too. They were made from a balsa wood and birch twigs. Airbrushed in various green-brownish shades. Later I will add moss to represent smaller branches and needles. This will later get coats of dark greens.

Ardennes Dio - Figure painting continued

I’m nearly finished with the figures. Since I’ve never really done US uniforms, I had a bit of trouble figuring out the right colour for the Wool overcoat on the US Airborne. After a bit of research I went with a mix of 5 parts US Field Drab and 1 part Olive Drabe for the base coat.

For the overcoat highlights I added a bit of 815 Basic Skintone to the base. For the deepest shadows I added a tat of black.

After hours of reading ALL the different opinions on The Airborne uniform colours (and there are A LOT out there!) I decided to go with a mix of 4 parts 988 Khaki and 2 parts 924 Russian Uniform.

For the belts, webbing and the various bags I used different shades of 886 Green Grey. Adding a tiny bit brown to some of the webbings and bags, I tried to emulate the difference in colour of the field gear issued throughout the war. Unfortunately these differences aren’t really that visible in my pictures…

There are still little things here and the to be done on each figure…

Ardennes Dio - Figure painting continued

The past days I’ve done a bit of work on one of the Airborne figures.

I started out by painting the face in the manner described in my earlier face-painting test. I used the same colours, though I did lighten them a bit more then the test. I thought the test face was a bit too tanned. This particular figure is an Airborne NCO in the Belgium winter…so I recon a more pale look is suitable.

Once again…the eyes look like shit, but hey they are really, really small and it’s a learning process!

The helmet was painted in VC 887 Brown Violet and weathered with Humbrol enamel steel on the rim. The visible lower inside of the helmet was painted with darkened Brown Violet to add shadow and depth. Final I applied a light was of US Olive Drab round the brown leather strap.

I painted the scarf with a base mix of 25% Brown Violet 887, 25% Middlestone 882 og 50% Russian Uniform 924.

For highlights I added a touch of VC 976 Buff to the base mix.

Shadows were down with a pin wash of US Olive Drab.