Inspiration hit me when I was building Dragon’s Operation Cobra Sherman. I came across pictures of the Belgian people celebrating and applying graffiti to American tanks as they entered towns and cities. So I did my best to replicate such a scene in a diorama. I’ve tried a diorama once before, but that effort resulted in little more than a warped piece of plywood.
This one turned out much better. The tank driver and assistant driver are from a Dragon set. The tank commander and loader are from a MiniArt set. The male civilians are MiniArt, but the female civilians are from Master Box. I don’t remember where the dog came from, but she’s painted to honor my own best friend. The building is Verlinden, and the street section is from MiniArt. They’re not the best pictures, but I can work on that. I hope you like it.
I’ve got three WW2 scenario’s planned for early next year and already have most of the basic kits & figures ready to be worked on.
One of them will be something similar to your diorama using a Tamiya Cromwell, Easy-Eight and the Masterbox 101st Tank Riders. If mine turns out even half as good as yours, then I’ll be a very happy camper indeed.
I’m glad you like it. It’s my best work so far. I know I have plenty of room to improve, but it was fun to take on some new challenges. I’m looking forward to my next project, which will be a picture from the battle of the Somme.
I had fun with it. It took me some experimenting and practice with pastel chalks to get the mud and dust looking right. I think the figures turned out well. Maybe I should post better pictures of the faces.
That was just a white colored pencil from the art store. I had trouble keeping it sharp. The tip would break off if I tried to sharpen the pencil to a very fine tip. I wrote the graphitti free hand. I just wiped it off with a damp Q-tip when I made a mistake.
It was fun. The art pencil turned out to be rather forgiving. I’d follow my reference picture to draw out some graffiti. If I didn’t like a portion of it, I’d simply wipe it away. It didn’t take very long, but I did erase portions of it a few times.
