Welcome to “Defending the Eyrie”. It’s a dio featuring 4 members of the Royal Australian Air Forces 2 AFDS (Air Field Defence Squadron) at Vung Tau during the Vienam War. 2 of the Adgies are inspecting their bunker, while 2 re crewing the Quick Reaction Force gun buggy.
Excellent work on your vignette!
The weathering really brings out the ‘red muddy’ conditions in Vietnam. Where I live (Nova Scotia) any excavation soon looks just like your scene.
Q: What medium was used to make the ground work, also the sandbags & bunker construction?
It’s a nice one and it’s from Vietnam! Cool!
I especially like the sandbag bunker and the tire marks in the mud. Some how-to would be really interesting. Please keep ‘em comin’ and have a nice day
Pawel
I like it but…
the sandbags really dont do it for me, the color seems really off and the weathering is very underdone. Also you should give them atleast a light wash in black to get the gaps and give it a bit of depth and shadow, right now it doesnt have it and it leaves alot to be wanted.
with the ground work and the mud, if your whole base is going to be mud mix up the color textures. If your using celluclay or something put different color of brown into the mix so you get a blend of colors and not one color throughout it make it seem dull.
How did mud get on the roof of the building in between the sandbags. When you weather think about where the stuff is, what comes in contact with it, and how that would make it look.
Overall just because there is mud does not mean that the whole thing should be weathered with the mud color. Even if you put a black wash and shade and shadow and all first then put the mud it would give alot more depth on it.
Also, when you are hand doing lettering use masking tape and rulers to try and make it straight.
looks good matt…but u knew that…[whstl]
smeagol the vile,
Black washes are more of artistic freedom than realistic, there are few places where a black wash should be used. I avoid them unless something dark needs ‘Bam’ or around motors / exhausts.
Regarding the ‘red mud’ I will take some pictures of construction sites near by, the red mud in this vignette is very realistic.
There are two conditions that stir up the red mud, or in dry times red dust. The roof has the right look of layered dust as it is placed by a road check point.
The hand lettering is what it is, I have seen Vietnam pictures showing sloppier hand lettered signs.
Your points are constructive yet border on a critics view point, its all in how its worded buddy as sometimes criticism turns new members off posting their work.
Well, I say black, but I mean a dark grey color, something to just show the shadows especially since those sandbags seem to be one piece and there is no real gap between them to show it naturally.
like this
Thats from a work of mine
I’m sure the ground would or could look like that, but just looking at a large diorama and the majority of it being just one color turns me off. There is no variation. Even if it was just mud the mud would not look the same color. not just naturally but from any other thing, oil in the dirt from vehicles, plants, mud tracked from other eras, minerals and deposits in the soil, materials from vehicles and supplies coming in and out of the area.
I still dont understand how mud and dirt enough to make the roof red would get ON the roof.
And as far as
“Your points are constructive yet border on a critics view point, its all in how its worded buddy as sometimes criticism turns new members off posting their work.”
This is a forum where people come to show their work, get criticism and critique, and improve. If you dont want that you dont post. I have started posting ALOT less because people dont reply. If you cant take criticism you wont ever improve.
Now you tell me what would help our friend here more “Hey, that looks great” or my post?
Smeagol, probably both. Most people PROBABLY would like to read something like hey, that looks great, on the other hand IMO this and that would look better if blah blah blah. You know, you show the builder you took the additional three minutes to wrap your critique in a nice paper and some ribbon.
As for the roof imagine a few dry days, where the vehicles beat up a huge dust cloud. Some of the dust deposits on the roof, and then the rain comes and you have mud on the road and on the roof. I think it’s quite plausible.
Thanks for reading, have a nice day
Paweł
Grimmo, good to see an Aussie subject. I think you’ve captured the scene really well. My only criticism is that I would expect more mud on the tyres and wheels and floorboards of the vehicle. Keep posting your builds.
Maybe I wasnt clear. While the roof seemed off to me what he has done looks good. Im just commenting on what he can improve.
Variety is the spice of life, ya know… thats why I suggested he use some different colors for weathering.
‘Red mud’ is the byproduct of red soil when wet, red dust when it is dry. I guess you need to experience it to really understand the nature of it. Like said I will take some photographs of near by construction sites, it should paint a clear (redder) picture of this type of soil.
Constructive criticism just needs a tweak in the wording to avoid sounding like flaw finding.
Example:
‘The interior portion of your scratch built cannon is way out of scale, scrap it and start over!’
Tweaked:
‘Once buttoned up the over sized scale of the cannon will not be too noticeable, good effort regardless!’
I’m with Suppression Fire on the red dirt. The red mud looks pretty good to me. The red comes from iron oxides in the soil…I don’t know about vietnam, but in other places, its often pure enough to use as a pigment for wall paintings, bark paintings etc…in other words its the same red you find in red ochre (and Indian red, venetian red etc) paint tubes, except that the soil has some more clear mineral material in it.
I suppose supressionfire, but I had to read the ‘tweaked’ one a few times before I got what you were trying to say, as opposed to the first one which is right to the point.
I dont see the need to dilly dally and dance around the bush when giving someone criticism
looks like ya did something right matt…ya got people talking about your piece. 
Being a modeler of my word here is the construction site pictures of ‘Red mud’
It has been raining a lot & the machines look newer so not much dust has settled on the upper surfaces.
I think it looks pretty good! I’m not a Vietnam expert so I can’t comment much on accuracy.
However, some one asked how there could possibly be mud on the roof. Well, that’s really quite simple actually. The roof is comprised of sand bags. They provide ample protection from small arms and a certain degree of shrapnel. But sand bags do not fill themselves. They would be filled by the grunts who need them, and I’m certain at one point or another would have come into contact with the ground, which has mud on it, which in turn would make the bags muddy. If at some point they were stacked on the ground then moved up onto the roof, VOILA, muddy roof…
Not everything in modeling has to be straight forward. A little common sense and imagination goes a long way.
That is what I meant by talking about the roof and on the jeep, look at the top of those construction vehichles, there clean and look brand spanking new. Especially if it was raining enough to make the mud in your dio it would have washed the tops clean, more or less.
But im not nitpicking on that because it couldnt be done, its because all of the weathering is done with just the one color, the color of the mud.
I wish the OP would post so we could get his line of thought on this, and if he is reading I just want to remind him that if I didnt think this was good and he had alot of promise I wouldnt be commenting like this. Around here you either get people that are top notch or brand new, rarely do you get people just coming up and its good to one posting. I just wana help you get better.
he’ll post soon im sure smeag. he’s a busy australian…but a good guy!
I like it. From pictures that I’ve seen and time that I spent in Honduras, I’d say the mud color is representative. Yeah, a little variety might be nice, but one of the mind-numbing features of a place like this is how monochromatic the mud can be. Everything is either red or it is green.
As to the mud on the roof - that looks spot on to me. Rain would not wash the top of that bunker clean since it is flat. The red dust would just turn to mud.
Two observations, though:
First - the two grunts in the jeep have awfully clean boots for it being as muddy as it is.
Second - shouldn’t those MG’s in the back of the jeep be loaded? Or at least the ammo cans mounted on the guns?
Otherwise, all in all, a nice bit o’ work.
Grimmo, I think you’ve done a bang up job on this but have to agree that a burnt umber wash on the sand bags with a little light dry brushing would really make them pop. Aside from a little seam on the FN/FAL it looks good (Bet a lot of our guys wish they had those instead of M-16s!). Nice to see this subject being modeled and keep them coming.
Pat