Well, this kindv'e goes with the thread, "Making Sand" but I didn't want to hi-jack that thread. So...I'm making a D-Day dio on the beaches of Omaha. I am currently making two test pieces to decide how I will make my sand. What I'm wondering is how to get a natural, beach look with painting. Or does it look better to simply use plain sand? My plan was to paint it with a yellowy/tan color, and then do some washes, and drybrushing. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hi Mathew. I guess every modeller has their own way and ideas about sand. Personally, I think you should stay away from real sand. 1/1 sand cant really represent 1/35 sand, IMO.
I use a very fine sand, bought from a pet-shop but it still needs to be sprinkled with powder and/or dust to make it finer. If I ever do a base with sand again, I will have even less texture.

The best representation of sand Ive seen to date, is Ulf Andersson´s - "Dust´n´bones" dio, which won silver at last year´s Euro. Wasn´t there, but its now located in my local hobby shop, so Ive had plenty of chances to check it out. He has used smoothed wall spackel and airbrushed it the sand colour. The image can be seen on Military Modelling home page. Click here for page, and its photograph # 72. It may not have the texture, but theres no mistaking what it is.

If you have the details and can pull it off, its one idea, but another is to paint the actual sand with pastels. I made a mix of sanded pastels and MIGs pigments and painted it on thickly for the sand in myTarawa - A Hell of a Way To Die dio. I thought it turned out pretty well ... even if I say so myself. Hopefully this gives you some ideas on how to proceed.

All beaches are not alike. Some Pacific islands were coral atolls, with sand that was virtually white (Peleliu, for instance). Other were volcanic islands with sand that was nearly black (Iwo Jima). Most beaches in North America are light colored sand, though the fineness varies (Daytona's sand is fine enough that you can drive cars on it--a hundred miles south, it's coarser, and you'd bog down). Some European beaches are gravel (shingle) rather than sand (the south of France, for instance, and some of the north coast). Parts of the British beaches at Normandy were marl, not sand, a claylike material that could bog a vehicle easily, one reason they developed the bobbin devices that laid a temporary canvas road surface to get vehicles across the beaches.
You should refer to period photos of "your" beach to get a better idea of the soil conditions. For color, go to Google Earth and select the Normandy coast--in the area around Caen, you can zoom right down to about 500 feet, and see the actual colors of the beach areas. The Omaha Beach photos aren't so sharp in resolution, but you can least see the general tones. Very cool!

ok, here's what I came up with.

This is the piece of foam I did some color tests on. It is durham's rock hard wood putty, with the same stuff sprinkled dry over the top of it.




Here's the one I thought looked the most like sand...



another pic



and another



And here's just plain sand sprinkled over plaster of paris, and drybrushed with white



My family thinks the real sand looks better, I think the painted stuff looks better, but maybe I'm biased because I painted it Anyway, which of the two looks better for an omaha beach dio, the painted powder stuff, or the real sand?

Just a matter of opinion, but I think the real sand is too coarse for a beach, but would look quite good for some desert terrains (the shingle beaches I've seen tend to have uniformly larger stones, but they are generally smoother stones, rounded by wave action).

If you look at the sand on its own ... of course the real thing will look more realistic.
Place some 1/35 soldiers on it and check with your reference group again! Does it look like a scale beach now?