Hey, I remember that FSM… I knew what Ian was talking about sounded familiar. That is a great looking technique.
Kenny, you said you had tried it. Did you make a lot of sandbags? Got any pictures of the results?
hey boyd yes i tried it awhile back when i saw that article way before i had a digital. excellent results but a very tedious and frustrating thing to do but once you get the hang of it it isnt too bad.
Hey, got some work done painting the Czech Hedgehog barricades. I did a reddish brown base color, with some orange-ish brown rust over that, then drybrushing slightly with some silver paint for a tiny bit of bare metal. I put a brown wash over it all and then some rusty brown oil pastel. Since I was using a lamp insted of natural lighting or something like that, the pictures came out terrible, and you can see blobs of weird colors if you look closesly. Some are too dark in the pictures, some too light, so just ignore that. Not a big update, just thought I’d post it.
I already had the camera out–how could I resist playing with the figures??[:D]
Black and white shows the painting better since there are no colors for my camera to mess up
looks excellent ian keep up the great work and the posts 
Thanks Kenny,next is the wooden barricades, and then its on to the sand If anyone has good tutorials on painting sand, I would love to see. Many of the techniques I ahve seen so far are for wargaming scenery, which in my opinion can look to “cartoony” or just in general not realistic sometimes. I think the key is just tons of drybrushing in varying lighter shades.
I took a look at some of the other photos you have of this project and so far i think you’ve done an incredible job for such a big project. I did notice though, that some of the men you have are paratroopers, who did not take part in the beach landings. otherwise everything looks fantastic
Looking great, Ian. You can try strands of autumn colored lichen for the bleached seaweed, dark green and brown for the fresher stuff… if you want, I’ll send you some. I put it on my barricades and around the water line mixed in with equipment. I even made dead fish out of Sculpey. Some left, if you want those, too.
Through a series of drybrushing and oil washing, that sand is gonna look great. You can also dust with Mig pigments and pastels. Normandy’s beaches look to me to be much more coarse than the ones you and I are used to, google “normandy beaches” and look in the images for recent color pics. See if you can tell what I’m talking about.
Excellent work so far.
Steve
Hey carnival fun, youre completely right about the paratroopers. I was going to try and modify them into regular soldiers, by cutting off the extra pockets and stuff. Most I probably won’t use anyways, since they are too casual. SteveM, thats a good ideas about the lichen for the seaweed, I might have to try it out. Well, not a big update, but I love posting so heres some newer pictures. Im still getting used to this camera, so the quality is still pretty bad. All Ive really done is painted the rest of the obstacles, and I don’t like my wood tone much, but I can still fix the that. I did the wood darker than normal too to give it a saturated, waterlogged look. I did a bit more work on the hedgehogs as well. I’ll keep you updated on the sand.
My camera made th rope on the mine look kind of thick and blobby but its not. It also made the mine look rusted, which it isnt, although I gave it a wash to keep it from looking too clean.
My hedgehogs are badly in need of a flat coat.
Looking REAL good, Ian. The mines look great. Keep posting, friend!
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Thanks, glad you liked it. Im working on the sand now, and although layer after layer of drybrushing the entire thing starts to get a little dull, it’s definately bringing it to life and giving it some depth. The next pictures you see should be looking more like a beach. Then some stowage and its off to the figures, since I dont yet have the guts to do my water.
Hi Ian,
A couple of comments based on my Dad’s experiences on an LCT-6 (544) in the fourth wave at Omaha. The gunners on his craft were exposed and firing the whole way in and suffered casualties as a result. You may want to show this on the LCM.
As the craft approached Fox Green, they were semaphored by a signalman from a knocked out LCT. My Dad was sent on top of the pilot house to read the message, which was, “Keep your heads down, its bad in here!” Naturally he was not pleased to be exposed with the MG whipping around.
The knocked out LCT had landed five tanks onto the beach, all of which were knocked out as they came ashore, and the crews were huddled behind the shingle wall on the beach.
The shingle wall was about 6 ft high at the high water mark, where most of the early survivors huddled. As a result, mortar fire was the real killer, the men were sheltered from direct MG and rifle fire.
My Dad’s skipper decided not to land at Fox Green, since there was no-one else there except the wrecked LCT-5 and its destroyed tanks. He moved down to Easy Red where there were many more men, tanks and equipment, and landed there. His LCT carried a bulldozer with a sled full of matting (to get through the shingle wall) and a couple of recon jeeps from 5th Ranger Bn.
Hope this helps. I have some photos my Dad took at the time if you’d be interested.
Steve
Wow, very interesting, and yes, I would love to see pictures!
[#ditto]
SteveM
[#ditto] And a salute to your Dad!
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[#ditto] did he by any chance get any photos of the actual beach?
That is looking fantastic. Very good size as well and will look great with all the figures. Great job on the landing craft as well. My Uncle was on Omaha at zero hour plus 15 minutes, as part of the 116th combat engineers attached to the 29th.
I hope to do an Iraq dio with a lot of figures and one or possibly two vehicles.
Looking forward to seeing your progress.
Thanks wilbur. Its still kind of intimidating to do all of the figures since Im still pretty new at them, but it should be fun. I received the pictures mentioned above, but for lack of time , can’t post them for a couple days, but they are absolutely amazing! I was suprised how many people on these forums have told me of the history of relatives being their on the very day. None of my relatives were actually there, but my grandmas first husband was killed in Normandy, Her second (late) husband, she met while they were both on medical duty in WW2, and a few months before she died a year ago, she had a boyfriend in the nursing home (at the young age of 89) who used to be a WW2 fighter pilot. I guess that proves that women love a man in uniform! But back to the forums, I have the sand almost finished, and its looking pretty good, plus I got my first airbrush for christmas! that should help finish the sand. Next I added lots of bullet holes in the Czech hedgehogs, on the sides facing the cliffs, to give the effect that the german defenses were trying their hardest to pin down the Americans from their bunkers. Pics are coming soon, as long as the ones I got, mentioned above. Thanks.
Ian,
Your project is coming out nicely. Can’t wait to see the final work.
any progress lately?i know its tuff after the holidays but ,.i just recieved my three stug III’s.all dragon all F models ,and all destined for the same dio.how are you at figure painting?personally i need lots of practice.any engineers blowing up beach obstacles.it is a very labor intensive even on a small scale to go after asubject as complex as beach landing.it looks like you have a good plan in place and i look forward to seeing more.
The combat engineers were carrying pipes that looked like a 4 ft piece of lolly column that day. These pipes were filled with TnT. I’m not sure if you can see this in “Saving Private Ryan” or not.
This is from a first hand account from the 116th attachment. I am very fortunate to have been able to sit down with my uncle and get first hand documantation. I know that the D-Day museum sent someone to interview him at one point. He ended up also fighting at the Bulge.
My grandfather was at Monte-Cassino. Can anyone imaginge modeling that?
I can’t even put into words what good men like this meant to me and this country.
Happy New Year to all !!!