Valkenswaard 1944, finished

knubbels
After postponing the painting of the tank riders for far took long I took a plunge and finally completed them.
Painting the softplastic figurines was a bit of a challenge. I had to prime them with a combination of acrylic colour and thinned PVA glue. without the aforementioned pre-primer no colour/primer I used would stay on.
The colour choices I made for the crews and tank riders are also an evolution. The crews of the Firefly Ic and the scout car in the foreground are from Milicast and were originally painted some 20 odd years ago. I partially redid them because they were far too bright.
The tank riders and tank crews by HäT and Orion I did based on my own 1944 uniform (Austerity pattern) and the books by Harlan Glenn "For King and Country" and the 2x books by Jean Bouchery "The British Soldier".

The material for the base:
(no endorsement/sponsoring here; it's just what I used and am happy to recommend after trying it myself)
-plywood
-cork
-air drying clay by "DAS"
-diorama textures by Vallejo
-static grass by "RTS Greenkeeper
-static grass, foliage and bushes by "Mininatur / Silhouette"
-specialist PVA glue for static grass also by "Mininatur / Silhouette"
-fixative by "Marabu"
("fixative" I used to apply additional layers of static grass. It is usually used to seal paintings without altering the colour or sheen because it dries completelely transparent but without the "clumpy drops" or glossy sheen airosol/spray glue leaves)

To cap this off:
it was lots of fun to learn all the new ways to revive my "old friend" doing modell kits after almost 20 years again.
More is on the way.
Cheerio!
knubbels

gorby
Very nice work! The 'natural' elements like the trees and the fast moving stream are particularly good. And those are usually the bits that modellers struggle with the most.

HSC1932
I love the size of this diorama

Łukasz Gliński
What a cool dio. Very nice and realistic 🙂

Guy Rump
Lovely dio 👍

Neuling
I agree with gorbygould. 👍

Mirko Römer
I agree with Neuling. 🙂

knubbels
Thank you for your kind words fellow Scalemates!
An ironic story regarding the "stream":
this being my first diorama in many years I wanted to create a realistic water body, too.
As you may know, Valkenswaard was en route to Eindhoven during operation "Market Garden". So I wanted to create a typical Dutch drainage ditch/canal. So I started off with an attempt to create a proper soil before putting water in.
A felt zillion attempts to get the brown / green combo right and having to redo the boulder with the reeds 3x times I was finally ready to put some "still water" in. After it cured I thought it was flat and boring. Basically like still pond rather than a "stream" or ditch.
So I decided to put a "little" froth and turbulence in.
Sitting in front of our lical stream I again noticed lots of greens shining around the frothy bits.
This I overdid heavily and the whole stream look awfully green.
I cleaned off some of it but ni luck.
Since I did not want to redo the entire ditch /water I remembered that there was a lot of rain on the 18.9.1944 and decided for more froth&foam to cover up my mistake.
This is what you see now.
You just need to ignore that the street is no longer wet🙂

Thanks again for your kind considerations
Knubbels

Tom
Great dio 👍 I have driven through Valkenswaard in much more recent times and with less armour 🙂 I like that area, very green.