Having completed the German 20mm FLAKVIERLING gun last year, it just sat in a display case. I decided to try and build a diorama for it. Ran off to Hobby Lobby to see what they had. I ended picking up a pair of trees, some ground cover, fallen tree parts and a wood base. Actually spent more on this stuff than I have most kits.
After the heart attack and going back into the ER this past Wed, I needed something to focus on other than worrying about my heart. So I started to finish this up today.
Began by cutting the bases off the trees and drilling holes into the wood base. Then I had to use a combination of Elmer's clear glue and nail gel glue. Neither alone wanted to hold the tree's in place. After making a mixture, the tree's held their position.
Then i added the ground cover by brushing clear glue on the base in sections. This stuff is plump. Tried to make it thin, but the stuff clumped a bit. In the end, I like it, because it allowed for me to add tire tracks and "foot traffic" around the gun. The ground cover was misted with some diorama glue I purchased at HL. This stuff is sticky as hell.
I added a few of the fallen logs to fill in a bit of the empty space. Once the gun was in the position I wanted, I glued that into place with the clear glue.
I picked up a set of Trumpeter German Anti-Aircraft figures over at hobbylinc. These figures suck. The plastic is overly thick, I had to break out the big clippers to get parts off the sprues. The mold lines were in places where sanding them off, you sanded away a lot of details, with the exception of the leg pieces.
The heads were attached to the sprues via the neck. Yet they had an extra "nub" on top of the head. This caused sanding away a lot of hair lines and other details. Fitting these, even after a lot of sanding was going to require some putty.
Once I was able to get the figures together and primed, I followed up with Vallejo paints. After the initial few coats of grey, I realized I used the wrong color grey. I intended to use Field Grey but used German Grey which is a lot darker.
After this dried, I started in with the Field Grey. The underlying darker grey actually helped with shadows. The skin tone was done in Vallejo Medium Skin with a little highlight of Vallejo's Light Skin. Black was thinned to water and all cloth creases, outlines, etc were done.
Sand Yellow, mixed with a drop of Mahogany Brown was used for hair and Mahogany Brown by itself was used for other hair. Refractive green was used to paint the shoulder insignias.
Once all this was dried, I used an Burn Umber oil wash on them. I over did it, but I like the worn, dirty, tired look they have. I finished them off with two coats of Tamiya XF86 Flat Clear. However they're still shiny. The gun was done in the same manor, and it's a flat tone. I'll let the figures sit for a few days and see how they look.
I bought some AV metal cases from hobbylinc as well. These fill in more empty space, but give the crew something to sit on and lean against. These were painted in Field Grey and finished with an oil wash and flat clear.
I need to add the "letters" to the figures and paint the field cup. I added two helmets and binoculars from the Tamiya kit I used for the Lost Soldier diorama.
