I wanted to glue this first GI figure to the base before getting started on painting the Platoon Sergeant figure. I think this vignette is taking shape. I hope to have it completed by the end of this upcoming week as long as everything goes well.
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I agree, it’s taking shape, a stunning shape!
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so I’ve made some progress still lots of turret pieces to add and of course paint and decals
TinyDog01
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Looking forward to seeing some paint on that!
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I have gotten some work done on the Platoon Sergeant figure, but still have more to do. Shortly after I started painting him, his right arm popped off. Fortunately it was a clean break and actually turned out to be a good thing because the arm and M16 were in the way of painting the right trouser pocket. In the closeups, some of the paint looks sloppy, but when held at arms length, or audience viewing distance, the transition from shadow to highlights actually looks relatively smooth. I had a problem when I was painting the eyes. I have some ocular nerve damage from a blast injury and it was causing me to have a hard time determining if the tip of my brush was making contact with the model. I have experienced it a bit before, but this time was worse than previous times.
I hope to get the back of the shirt and the left arm painted tomorrow. Hopefully I can have him and the vignette completed by the end of the week.
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Very nice brushwork.
“It’s only a flesh wound”
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Oh, crap!
Now his other arm fell off and he is kicking at me!
Lol.
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I had planned on working on the Platoon Sergeant figure Wednesday and Thursday, but other stuff came up so I wasn’t able to. However, today I was able to and this is what was done to him…I painted his left sleeve, the 9th ID patch (there was a small flaw yhat I saw in these photos and have since fixed it), the subdued SFC chevron, the back of the shirt (still have to finish that up), the M16, the skin tones on the hands and forearms, and the boots. I reglued the right arm and am going to let the glue cure overnight.
Tomorrow I will touch up the area where the arm was glued back on, paint the right sleeve and chevron, dirty up the uniform, and touch up whatever else needs to be touched up before mounting it to the base.
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Beautiful work, James! Excellent painting skills!
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Thank you. I finished the Platoon Sergeant figure today.
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I finished the Platoon Sergeant figure today. I painted his right sleeve and chevron, dirtied up his uniform, applied sweat stains to his back and armpits, and applied blood effect to several areas. The blood on the buttstock and some of the blood splatter is from butt stroking some VC, other blood splatter is from hand to hand fighting, blood on the hands and forearms are from helping the medic treat the wounded, and the blood on his shoulder is from carrying a wounded Soldier to some better cover for treatment. As he surveys the carnage of multiple human wave attacks, he is also trying to deal with the emotions associated with having some of his Soldiers KIA and WIA.
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I was able to complete the vignette after the Platoon Sergeant figure was completed. These are the initial photos. I might try to take better ones with my portable photo booth at some point.
Thanks for looking.
Cheers,
James
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this is a magnificent vignette and is truly a labour of love.
as i understand it, you plan to enter it in to model shows in the USA and i am curious about that as here in the UK it might come under the rules of excessive blood and gore.
kind regards
Klaus
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Thank you.
There are some shows here in the US that would not allow something like this to be shown, or would have it placed in an area for similar entries. But there are those that will, or at least I imagine they will allow it to be shown because I have seen works of zombies ripping people apart that are much more graphic. This scene is actually quite tame compared to some of the things I saw on various deployments. I actually held back on a lot.
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Very well done! As I’ve said earlier, I hope folks will look at this, appreciate the artistic talent it took to build it, and then think for a minute what’s going on here. I agree this is very tame compared to what the aftermath of a real fire fight looks like, but it’s enough to set the stage for (what I think) is the message the builder is trying to convey. War is nasty business, we don’t need to go overboard depicting that…and this doesn’t. Very nice work.
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@SFCJJC
Thank you. That means a lot coming from you. I think I was able to capture the moment and message fairly well without going overboard. I probably won’t do any combat scenes for a while. I just wish I worked faster on my projects - so many ideas, but not enough time to get to them all.
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Nice work!
“It is good that war is so terrible or else men would grow too fond of it.”
I’ve been considering commenting on this. At the risk of opening a can of worms, I will finally say that I’m often surprised at how sterile and disconnected most modeling subjects tend to be from war. I can understand that we like to celebrate the men and machines. We commemorate service or place the marvels of engineering on a pedestal. We obsess over details to create our own little marvels. I understand the desire to avoid the realities of war; depicting gruesome scenes can seem voyeuristic and tasteless.
So how on earth does one “tastefully” display what war really is? When James started this, I was wondering what the story was going to be with the machete. That grunt had his opportunity to make the green grass grow…
At the end of the day, the men, their weapons and machines serve a single purpose. It isn’t to sit in a motor pool and look impressive. I suppose this is why I find myself hesitant to dive into modeling my own conflict, or why I can’t bring myself to model WWII Germans.
Thanks for the superb work James.
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Scene speaks volumes about the savagery of war. The sergeant’s expression as I see it is one of utter fatigue, senseless, and despair that was the war in Vietnam.
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Armorsmith’s reaction above is exactly what I meant, this scene makes you stop and think. I feel that’s great! I’m not knocking the excellent models I see here that are accurate to the smallest nut and bolt, that takes real talent as well. Our hobby has room for all kinds of builders. This may prod me into a scene from RVN (my war), but it will probably be lighter, something like a couple of obvious field troops loading their M151 with cases of beer and soda outside the “Big PX” at Long Binh or Cam Ranh before heading back to base camp or an FSB before it gets dark. Not as powerful as Jame’s work, but might raise a chuckle from someone who had been there.
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@Apache26
Thanks, Travis.
Some of the same reasons that I very rarely do any combat scenes and do not depict my conflicts and operations I participated in. I think we have had discussions about this subject, things I have seen in FB Vietnam Modeling groups, and Vietnam modeling overall on several occasions.
The main reasons I went with the machete was to convey how brutal hand to hand combat can be without showing a chopped up dude at his feet.
@Armorsmith
I am glad I was able to pull off the effect I was hoping for. There were times as I was building this when I had my doubts.
@SFCJJC
I am looking forward to seeing you build that scene. Those are the kind that I prefer. Do you remember my “Standdown Shenanigans” diorama I built a few years ago of some drunk Grunts heading back to the company area with one of them stopping to urinate on the seat of a M151 belonging to the 9th MP Company? The MP was not happt about that.
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