I haven’t built anything in 6 months, so I thought I would get started with something small and easy to build.
Found a Russian WW2 tank - the OT-133 flamethrower tank - and a Russian farm kit from Pegasus in my stash, so I settled for a building a small 1/72 diorama using these two kits:
I’m not finnished building the tank, but the log cabin is finally done. The original cabin wasn’t very detailed, so I did some changes:
Texturizes the log cabin walls
Built a new chimmney
Put on some real straw on the thatched roofe
Added supporting beams on the roof
Added a small roof over the door and a stone threshold
Added windows
This is what it looks like now:
Here’s the base. Didn’t find any styrofoam, so I had to settle with ordinary cardboard for the base.
And finally, here’s two pics of the general composition of the dio. A very simple idea, but it should get me started.
Next up is sculpting the groundfloor. That’s been awhile since, so it will probably be a challenge.
Done with the sculpting of the gruond floor. Used ordinary white carpenter putty for this part. Didn’t bother much with the details, since the next step is to add sand and soil in different ratios for the texture.
I also found the camera’s whitebalance function, so these pics are a bit better than the last ones, which was a bit yellowish.
Skipped a couple of steps on the groundwork. But here’s the almost finnished results. The only thing that’s left to do on the base is to add some farm details. The painting of the tank and the figure is probably going to take a while.
Hello bultenibo! Beautiful work so far, I like it a lot! The house looks exactly like I would expect it to, now I’m curious about the people. Good luck with your work, hae a nice day
Pawel: I’ve chosen two figures for the diorama. A commander and a gunner from the tank crew. I had a couple of figures from Preiser that I think would fit in nicely.
Redding: The reason I chose this scale was the I wanted a small project that I could finnish in just a couple of weeks. I also wanted to do something challeging, so that I maybe could improve my groundwork skills. And for that reason I thought that working with a smaller scale than 1/35 would fit that purpose. Back in 2005, when I first took up the hobby again after a some 20 years absence, I also chose to work in the 1/72 scale for a while after switching to the 1/35.
The thatched roof was ade out of some ordinary 2 inches long hobby grass that was glued onto the roof with white glue.
Maddog: Nice that you got some inspiration! Looking forward to see what you have going on your workbench!
BTW I found some pics of the 1/72 dioramas that I made back in 2005-2006.
I really like building these kind small dios, since they doesn’t take as much time to do as an ordinary 1/35 dio. They also come in handy when it comes to practicing some skills.
The first fig is done, and tonight I’ll paint the second fig, so there should be a finnished dio here tomorrow.
Gamera: That’s my problem too! I’m beginning to think that I’ve got a too short attention span for building dioramas in the 1/35 scale. I’m still hesitating to get started on an pretty ambitious dio project that I’ve been collecting stuff for for a couple of yeras now.
