Meanwhile the NSAWC Tomcat, and the F-84F were on the way to be completed, I start a basic diorama. I will represent the surrender of two French tank crew, to German infantrymen, in the street of a French village, under the control of the crew of a Panzer IIIE. Nothing particularly sophisticate, most of the build will be OOB. The only aftermarket purchased are the workable track set Miniart, for the tank. I start from the Miniart French street dio-set, Panzer crew and the already mentioned workable track set, a beautiful Panzer IIIE Dragon, and figure “Blitzkrieg in France”.

For the construction of the buildings, I will recommend the video tutorial available on the Miniart page.

I start assembling the buildings, that will be keep separate from the base, in order to better handling them during the painting phase.

The building on the left was paint almost entirely with Tamiya Acrylics starting with a medium gray as primer and proceeding with the color suggested by the box art. Then I resume my old Humbrol enamels and brush, and paint all the bricks with Brick Red 70. Many of them where darkened or lightened with different mix of brick red, chocolate brown and flesh.

The roof was paint in a similar way like the wall bricks, but this proved to be a mistake, later on you will understand why.

The building sustained heavy oil paint washes. Yellow area with Burnt Sienna, Blue and light blue with a grey-blue mix, inside wooden floor and the roof with Terra di Cassel. All wash where immediately removed with a fabric cloth slightly wet in white spirit. My hope that Humbrol paint on the roof would have withstand oil wash and white spirit cleaning soon was disappointed, and in a few point the gray Tamiya primer shows up. I therefore had to repaint few tales, spray a matt cote Tamiya, and restart the process with oil paint. Fortunately the gentle wash on the bricks, made with white oil color, did not create any problem.

The second building has been painted in a similar way, this time the all building’s parts where sprayed with Tamiya acrylics, except for the brick wall and the wooden structure, for which the Humbrol proved to be a good choice since they works good with the brush.

Next step I will add Windows and drain pipe and proceed with the street base.

19 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Many thanks, Pedro, glad you like it.

Thanks Michel, glad you like it. You are right, these Miniart houses are nice bases, walls, stone, street are nice and realistic. The accessory like doors, windows etc.. could be better detailed. The assembly is a bit tedious job. Expecially when the two half of a brick wall needs to be joined toghether.