Hi Everybody,
Well this is my first real full on winter dio, I've done a couple little ones, with a little snow, but this time the whole thing is snow covered. This has my Panzer IV H (which I posted earlier) and Tamiya's KV-1. Figures are from Dragon, Tamiya and a donated Verlinen Tank Commander courtesy of Mike Durr, thanks again Mike for helping out in a pinch!!!
Snow was made from sanded white tile grout on a insulation foam base which was carved using my dremmel tool, and leftover pieces added for raised ground areas. The KV was pretty much built and painted in like an afternoon, I knew that it was going to be covered in snow, so all the weathering I really did was to rust the tracks to represent that the vehicle has been brokendown and abandoned for quite some time.
Enjoy, sorry for the amount of pics but that's what happens when I have a big dio! :-) Thanks to Bugsy again for the pics!

















Comments welcome!!!

Looks good, though even though the KV is abandoned, I think more attention to the painting could have been done, the sides where the roadwheels are dont seem painted, as well as behind them.

Looking good. I like the way the KV is blocking thr road

thanks guys, Shain, the KV is actually painted, I tried to put snow in amonst the running gear and up agianst the hull where the wheels are, kind of tried to simulate like the snow has blown up against the whole thing, something that I may have gone overboard a bit maybe causing the tank to look unpainted? hmm, may have to go back and look agin, maybe I can get a brush in there and paint with some earth colours to simulate mud..

Yo Kelly -

You're welcome. What an superb job, it really brings out the winter/snow theme outstandingly. Figures are well positioned, I and really like that Tank commander :-) The trees look great with the heavy snow and I was wondering who makes them. I'm planning a King Tiger on a snowy road and have been looking for good candidates for trees. Well done my friend.

Blade48mrd

Kelly, great job. I love the snow! Everything looks good. cheers Kevin

That looks outstanding. I like how you did the snow and everything else Good job

What a chilly surprise! Great work, Kelly! Congrats!
Cheers and happy modelling!
Prato

Kelly, looks great, really love the trees how did you make them ? I'd like to try my hand at those.
Cheyenne

Thanks everyone for the comments! Ok, some explanations:

Snow: Made from tile grout, there were a couple problems, I first picked up non-sanded grout and started appling it, then found out the consistancy wasn't right, it was more like trying to glue down flour. so I picked up some sanded grout, and even though it said on the tub "snow white" it was more of a grey
I continued on and when everything had cured, I painted on two coats of thinned white craft acryllics, much much better! :-)
Trees - guys and gals, when xmas time comes rolling around, go to your local Michaels Craft Store and look for the Xmas Village Collection put out by a company called Lemax. All sorts of goodies they make and quite a bit of it will pass for 1/35, briges, walls etc. I picked up these trees there, already had some snow on them, but I added more simply by pouring on more grout after I had sprayed with white glue/water. (note when it gets closer to xmas the stuff becomes insanely cheap!)
Figures: Painted with Vallejo, Tamiya and Craft paints, a light grey artist oil wash for the white unis, and my black/burnt umber mix for the rest. I added the snow to the unis simply by misting water on the lowerparts of the coats, legs and took a knife with a teeny amount of grout, and simply held the knife up to the figure, and blew the snow onto the figure all the way 'round.
Also lightly drybrushed light blue onto the snow and trees if you look at snow on a sunny day, kind of has a blue-ish tinge to it, and helps give a bit of depth.
Ok, had enough of outdoors dios, next up a Panther G and a Verlinden ruined bridge, gotta get back to my ruins! :-)

Very well done Kelly,trees look good as does the setting.The idea of deep snow is interesting,man,that KV is covered! Excellent stuff.

Great work. That is truely a piece of great modelling skills. Tells a good story too.

Thanks for sharing

Kelly ,
very nice job,the layout ,the painting and the weathering work is great.
Congratulations
Pedro

Fantastic dio. One of those where photoshopping the photos a little makes for some very nice pics...



Dave

Yah, I tried out doing the grayscale thing on a couple of the pics, and found the grain feature, kinda wanted to look like a wartime photo, makes me want to go back to some old pics and try that!
thanks again all

the tank commander looks really cold!!!!!!!

reb

wow i like the intense snow fall on this dio. You may have mentioned this in a previous post but is this a scene from Bastogne cause it sure looks like it?

good choice of figures and adding snow to their legs as well.

Hi Jazza, not Bastonge, would look kind of funny with a Russian tank there! :-) Actually most of my dios are of the "somewhere in...." type, so for this one it's basically somwhere in Russia. It's a good thing I had the really old Tamiya KV1 kit, I certainly didn't want to cover up say a Trumpeter kit with all that snow! SAS actually gave me the KV, partally assembled (hull with torsion bars already attached and the turret mostly complete, so having it pretty much finished in a day made the dio assembly go that much quicker...
One thing about the figures...they turned out alot better than my Farmyard dio, the last few dios I've assembled the figs with all of their gear on, then painted around, and to be honest they've suffered from this method. I'm going to go back to my old way, assemblng the figs, and painting and attaching the gear separately. Oh, I used Tamiya masking tape for all of the gear and weapon slings and to get the bullet belts to bend, I simply kept brushing on Tenax until soft, and formed the shape, a method found quite by accident!