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This depicts the gathering of German forces just prior to the battle. The officers are planning out the inital movements while the driver discusses his new ride with a schutz. Little does the crew know how much they will miss the infantry later ...
Anyhow, this is DML's Ferdinand with a added tarp and tow cable (hard to believe DML left out a proper tow cable for the kit...
) The kit decals also fell apart when they hit water, so I scrounged up some decals from the spares box, airbrushed the red "box" marking on the rear plate, and for that extra dash of pinache, I added a resin jacket to the back from Verlinden. Hey, my wife thought the jacket looked cool! :-) 
The "Russian hut" is from Custom Dioramics and presented it 's own special problems. If you have not tackled a ceramic/plaster kit before, be warned that they can be fairly basic. An excellent tip I picked up was to use spackle (used for working with sheetrock) and a medical syringe (Please be CAREFULL!) to fill in cracks, crevasis, and major holes. I filled in the largest air pockets in th walls and also the HORRIBLY large seam down the middle of the roof. I used a wire brush, once the spackle had dried, to add the straw texture and it seems to have come out pretty well.
The figures are from the spares box or are leftovers from sets...Tamiya and DML.
The base is 1/2 inch pink extruded polystyrene insulation...foam board insulation from the local hardware store. I used sanded tile grout for the base mix and once it was applied and starting to set, I made various impressions for the tank and tracks, footprints and also a place for the soldiers to stand, added the fenceposts and broken boards, and impressed the ammo boxes. And dont forget to make a hole for the tree! I also impressed the russian house....and it stuck. Pulling it out was making the grout come off the base, so i just left it on even though I had some heavy painting/washes to do. Oh well.
I also added sand and some smaller rocks, then added a fairly diluted coat of white glue (elmers glue) and then sprinkled on static grass. Let this dry completly.
Next I added a dark brown/black wash made from cheap acrylic craft paint and water twice. The second time I added more static grass...this works because the "glazing" of white glue put on before redissolves and the grass is glued on. Just take care not to mess up what you started with.
After that dried, I started drybrushing various features with either gray shades or else tan and green shades. This takes some trial and error to get a good look. At one point I had some really funky green/blue grass!
Patience and a bit of experimentation will get you through though.As for the tree, it is a sprig of decorating foilage from the craft store. Once winter is over here, I should be able to find other equally usefull plants around my outdoors and not have to pay for "trees". I painted the tree brown first, for the trunk, then airbrush the green for the leaves and then went back with brown to touch it up. For my first "green" tree, not too bad.
And there it is, a Kursk Diorama. Glad I am done.
