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The Diary of a Winter Diorama

The Story

This is a diorama I am building for the Houston Armor Club's February group build with the "Cat" theme.  As this was my third diorama and I am still practicing my armor building and painting skills as well my diorama building skills, I used the old Tamiya Tiger I Model (35056).  I wanted to try my hand at a snowy landscape and a winter whitewash and using snow for the first time.

Tiger I Model:  This is an out of the box build of the Tiger kit.  Overall the construction went smoothly. The most glaring item that I did not like about this kit was the molded on track repair cables on the side of the Tiger.  I decided to hide the cables as much as possible in the final stages of the build by hanging a traction log on the side.  Once construction was complete, I painted the Tiger with ModelMaster Acryl (MM) Schwarzgrau, RAL 7021.  I then painted the tracks, still unattached to the tank, a mix of various colors that included MM Rust and several dark brown colors to get what I thought looked like a good weathered track base color.

Figures:  The infantry figures for this diorama are the Tamiya 35256 German Infantry in Assault with Winter Gear.   I filled the seams using Gunze's Mr. Dissolved Putty.  I made the gun slings out of the foil tops from my son Drew's pudding and yogurt cups and thin wire from a Radio Shack. For the tank commander I modified the pipe-pointing figure from the Dragon Sturmartillerie crew set (6029) with one of the heads included in the Tamiya Late Tiger I kit as I did not want to use the tanker beret.  The Dragon kit comes with photo-etched earphones that were used on the tank commander. I drilled holes in the figures' feet and inserted toothpicks to use as holders during the painting.  I then primed the figures with MM Acryl grey primer.