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Making a Dinghy Vignette

I’m lucky to have some good wargames chums.  One of them, Peter Nicholson, very kindly  gave me a US Marine dinghy from 1st Corps.  He knew I was in the throws of putting together a small Pacific War project and had some 1st Corps vouchers to use up - thanks again Peter.

I’d had the model a while. Then, with the arrival of some TAG Japanese, the Pacific project was rejuvenated and the dinghy hit the workbench.
I’d initially planned just to paint it up. Then I saw Sam Garcia’s 120mm diorama of Marines landing on Tarawa (it’s on www.digitaldioramam.com) and knew I had to have the dinghy landing on a beach.

The model comes with some equipment so I decided to have some flotsam on the beach to add a little variety to the vignette. The dinghy and the equipment were glued on to a piece of artist board. I then glued on strips of card to build up a wave effect and covered the water section with tile grout. I tried to get some peaks on the waves and used a more watered down mix for the water lapping the beach.  Once dried the water section was covered in PVA.

Left to dry overnight I then began painting. The dinghy was done in a olive drab combo and the haversacks in khaki. The water proved the biggest challenge.  I couldn’t master the fantastic effect of Sam’s diorama, but basically I built it up from sky blue, with mixes of buff, then to buff and finally white.  Not brilliant, but pretty effective for the wargames table.  The whole thing was liberally sprayed with gloss varnish and the dinghy then matt coated, leaving the bow and a few other places gloss to give the effect of having been splashed with water. The beach was painted darker nearer the water line and then gradually dry brushed with lighter tones towards the edge of the model.