Those of you who visited my website know I like it most to make different subjects, from WW1, Wild West, Samurai and Thunderbirdfs to (not to often) WW2. This time I'm going to challenge myself in making a dio about Nappies retreat from Russia wir=th lots of snow and ice ( and difficult paintwork.... )
As a base I will use a piece of wood that my son used as decoration in his aquarium. Figures will be 1/32 Andrea and Pegaso.
I'm planning on using acrylics and oilpaint.

WoW! ... nice project, I really liked the base you chose, I will follow the progress, also because my Canton in Switzerland the Ticino is very tied both to Napoleon and to the retreat from Russia, 1300 of my fellow countrymen Which were many of my canton (state,region) made it possible to Napoleon the retreat during the Battle of Beresina, part of my region's soldiers were engeneer that they entered and many dead in the cold waters of the river Beresina to keep the bridge across the river crossable and another part Of men fought against the Russians to keep them far from the river because they wanted to prevent Napoleon from crossing it.

In my Canton they felt in debt with Napoleon because he actually created the canton that was just a "colony" south of the Alps controlled by German Swiss cantons and for this every year we do a parade of the Napoleonic militia

Very Cool Base, can not wait to see it come to life.

Groundwork started. I'm doing small parts at a time.
Also painted the horse with oilpaints but when you take pictures you always notice there's some room for improvement so that'll come later.


The bushes need more snow but I decided to let it snow when all groundwork is done.

Excellent Hans..., love these 'thinking outside of the box' dio's...., dioramas built on something other than the regular picture frame or wooden block always look great. That little bit of work you've done on it already looks good, and the subject is interesting too - no Panzerschreck's or M3 Stuart's on this one....
Will follow this one with interest, good luck!

Simon.

Thanks.
Here's a snowy Nappy.
Oil painted horse, rest with acrylics.

Tree needs snow and, as said, it will 'snow' when all groundwork is done but this poor fellow didn't make it back to France.
I'm doing small parts at a time. It gives me room to think about each part. Now I'm working on a frozen brook that will be part of this diorama.

Let me know if you want me to post more of the build and don't hesitate to give me feedback.

Excellent idea for the base Hans. Totally different than the norm which will make it stand out on it's own. Your figures and ground work make it stand out also. I'll have to follow your build. Building dio's myself, it makes you look for alternative ways to accomplish things. I found out that you can use tree bark laid on it's side to represent stone banks of different types depending on the type of bark you use. Looking forward to seeing more of this build.

of course we want to see more !
J

Hi Hans ,

i like your idea very much , and i want to see the updates too.
Congratulations for the paintwork on the figures especially the horse and its rider , love it.

The adding of snow on the wheel for example is very well done , now my feedback to you is that the pose of the figure on the horse indicates that there's a severe cold wind or blizard blowing . Maybe you can show this on the scene by adding small pieces of tin foil. For example the frozen soldier has a blanket wrapped around his body , if you paint a small bit of tinfoil in the same color and add to his blanket it will look like a small piece that has been torn and is waving in the wind? Or a bigger piece of cloth hanging on the tree??? It will be a nice touch in my opinion.

Kurt

Bob, thanks and I agree. I recently saw some small WW1 diorama's where a rusty helmet and waterbottle were used as base. That's creativity. I've been looking for some of that stuff eversince.
Jerry, will do and don't hesitate to give me tips. All techniques I use here are new to me so there's always room for improvement.
Kurt, no blizzards here. It's just darn cold

Very imaginative, crank up the 1812 Overture. Great work, looking forward to the final result

Update before we shutdown for 2,5 weeks while on holliday.
I'm using all techniques in the book so this is quite a learning experience. For the frozen pond I used artificial water and glassplinters (smashed a lightbulb) for iceflakes.
For the figure (which, in my humble opinion, turned out rather well) I used acryl washes and the face was done with oils. For the rifle I once again used the furniture repair stick.The soldier will get some more snow but that will be done later.





I used my sons smartphone for the pictures because my camera is packed for the upcoming trip.

Well conceived and executed thus far. Very atmospheric. One can almost feel the wind and biting cold of the Russian winter.

Quick update. Far from ready yet but here's a short update.
The canon is added and I made some changes to the small brook.
Need some more stuff but that'll have to wait till after October 21 when I've been to the Scale Model Challange.