120mm

Painting 3-color DBU

Groundwork and Layout of the Vignette

The base supplied with the kit just doesn't do the figure justice. Instead, I was thinking of making a small vignette, thus utilizing the action pose of the figure much better. I decided to go with a rather simple idea, something one can see quite often on news footage from Iraq these days; a soldier is about to enter a house and inspect it for the possible insurgent threat. I used wooden blocks to build the house structure. After covering the wood with a layer of plaster, I drilled some bullet holes in it and painted it using enamels. Weathering was performed by several thin washes and weathering powders. The groundwork was kept to the minimum, sand surface with small pebbels.

I made a wooden ammo crate and added some debris as well as Iraqi leaflets I found on the internet. I also used Mission Models .50 caliber shells; the calculation of the scale difference revealed an almost perfect size match of 1/35 scale .50 cal shells to represent 1/16 5.56mm small arms shells.

Conclusions

There were so many additional details I wanted to do with this vignette before I call it finished such as slinging an AK-47 on the figure's back and painting an Iraqi war slogan on the wall. I didn't have the time to do all this since I entered this figure in Missing Lynx's Modern Expo 2005 and I had to meet that deadline. Fortunatelly it was well worth it; my 101st Airborne won Best Figure of the Expo award! References 1.) “Desert Garb & Gear, the equipment of America’s Desert Warriors”, J. B. Paskauskas, Concord Publications Company 1994. 2.) “Brassey’s Book of Camouflage”, T. Newark, Q. Newark, Dr J. F Borsarello, Brassey’s Ltd. 1996. 3.) “Victory, Desert Storm”, E. Micheletti, Y. Debay, Windrow & Greene Ltd. 1991.