Having completed work on the base it was time to tackle the cliff and vehicles.
My first attempt at painting the cliff and front of the fortress didn't work very well as there was an ugly gap where the two parts of the model didn't fit together properly. To disguise this I used more of the silicone sealant to fill the gap. I emptied several tea bags and put the leaves in the oven to dry them. I mixed them in various dishes of paint - light green, dark green, brown and yellow and daubed them along the base of the fort. This created a fairly good likeness to Gorse bushes.
Because of the way the sand would be well churned where the troops are scrambling over the beach, I added more sand and poked various divots and marks into the surface to rough it up.
So with the landscape taking shape it is now back to the vehicles. Dilute washes of greys and browns soon made them look grubby and well used.
The Bedford truck didn't have a driver supplied with it so I used a sharp knife to remodel one of the tiny soldiers. I suppose this could be called 'Plastic surgery'. Obviously this had been done before the cab had been constructed and I'm glad I made that extra effort at that stage.
The Willeys Jeep is towing a Howitzer canon and I've positioned it disembarking from the Landing craft, so I've added sand to the front tyres but not the rear.
I'm annoyed that the kit didn't include a driver but, because of the open nature of the cabin, I'm not confident that I could construct one. This is something I may come back to one day.
The Sherman tank was easy enough to paint as was sticking sand around it's tracks.
One problem I had was trying to figure out how the tracks would disturb the sand as the tank turned.
To solve this I filled a shallow tray with sand and manoeuvred the tank through it. I then took a photo and replicated the track patterns on the diorama using PVA and sand.
As a point of interest, Airfix, in their ultimate wisdom, chose to mix up the scales in this kit using 1/76 for the tanks and 1/72 for everything else. When I queried this in their support forum I was told the small difference wouldn't be obvious. I disagree.
With the vehicles painted and weathered it's time to work out their final positions in the scene.
I had intended to make various beach defences like tank barricades, rolls of barbed wire and sundry obstacles designed to slow an invasion, however, the beach area is so small I'm concerned about over filling it.
I'll review how it looks once all the troops are deployed .... and that is the next job.
Please read about the construction of my dioramas...