Bradley M3A2

Here is a my latest project – a diorama of a Bradley M3A2 on a training exercise in Germany. This is the Dragon kit, and it was a nice build. Good surface detail, and everything went together really well. Most of what you see on the model is right out of the box. The only additions I made were the antennae and gluing exposed film for the viewports. The antennae were made from nylon paintbrush strands, and the balls on top of the antennae were done by dipping the ends in gap-filling superglue multiple times.

The diorama base is made from a picture frame. The roadbed is plastic clay, which was actually a little difficult to work with. It laid down fine, but I think I made the roadbed too think, and when it dried, it cracked. The groundworks were made using a technique I found on the Missing Lynx website. (www.missing-lynx.com/articles/dio/dioramabases_robplas/dioramabases_robplas.html) Basically, it involves mixing sand with white glue and water, then sprinkling dirt, grass, etc. on top. In hindsight, I should have probably used more static grass and darker dirt. The deer crossing sign is made from sprue, card, and wire.

The M3 is a cavalry vehicle – the infantry complement is two scouts. These are taken from the Revell Modern US Infantry set. The poses are good, but face detail is lacking. I had read about a technique using salt particles to create the uniform camo pattern, but I couldn’t get it to work, so I just painted it by hand.

For the faces on these figures, I tried two new techniques. First, I used an oil wash to bring out the shadows, which worked out pretty well. I still want to experiment more with oils in the future. My second new technique was on the eyes. I allowed the dark oil wash to pool in the eye sockets of the figure. Then, I painted a black dot in the center of each eye for the iris and pupil, then a bone-colored dot in each corner of the eye to give the impression of whites. It turned out fairly well, I think, but I still haven’t found a great technique for painting eyes in 1/72 scale. Some are of the opinion that the eyes shouldn’t be painted in this scale, but I just can’t not paint eyes on them.