Dioramas in Relic Canteens

I like using a war relic as a base when i am making a miniature diorama. I have built dioramas on large grenade fragments, shell casings, rifle casings, boxes, coils of barbed wire, plus lots of other bits, and I am always trying to fit the scene and its landscape to the story of the relic.

This time I have gathered pics of my canteen dios to show you, where I have used rusted- and battle damaged metal bottles as bases. The miniatures used are all in scale 1/35.

1:

"Partizans"

This field flask was given to me by a friend living in the far north-east of Norway. She found it in the mountains around Kirkenes and thought it would serve best for the future as a piece of art.

In the region during the war many civillians became involved in the resistance work. Much of their activities involved sending information back to Soviet and for this they risked their own and their families life.

The scene I made shows a winter scenario with two such lightly armed partizans operating the radio. A funny note is the radio antenna being a whisker dropped by my cat Mimi. The figures came with a Zvezda kit.

Ithink the figures came from a Masterbox kit.

Possibly an explosion flattened the canteen

I thought about covering the whole surface with the snow, but opted for just the section in the corn

2:

"War Grave Commission"

I found this canteen in german fighting positions in Kurland, Latvia, while searching for lost soldiers. No MIAs were found that day, but an idea for a diorama had sprouted. Later, when I was back home I began working on a homage to all the diggers out there dedicated to finding the lost souls.

The scene I had in mind was simply to show how it might look when one is digging on a signal given by the metal detector next to a large birch, and it turns out to be a fallen soldier still wearing his helmet.

I made the tree, metal detector, camera, shovel and pinpointer from scratch and found the skull and the diggers jacket in my miniature stash. The same with the bayonet and the canteen laying on the plastic body bag, which I made from a piece of wine bottle foil. After a bribe with a chocolate the very skilled GirlfriendWife drew the Latvian War Grave Commissions logo onto the body bag.

A very simple but poignant scene.

bralu kapu komiteja

3:

"Stadtmitte"

From this battle damaged late war canteen I wanted to make a "last stand" kinda scene. The stamped metal drinking vessel was dug up in Priekule, Latvia.

The combat groups fighting in the end stages of the Kurland battles were a mix of different units thrown together and I tried to show that using three soldiers with different uniforms and gear.

The figures are a mix of Dragon and Masterbox, or prehaps Miniart and all painted with Vallejo Acrylics.

4:

"Panzerjäger"

Here is another red oxide late war canteen. Half of it had rotted away, making the rest of it a perfect choice for a dio base.

In this one I also made a Kurland Kessel related scene. A german grenadier hunting Iwan panzers from a shell crater.

I armed him with two panzerfausts, a K98 Mauser and a PPSh41 Soviet sub machinegun, and painted everything with the fine Vallejo paint. The figure is from Masterbox, slightly modified to hold the Pz.faust.

5:

"6. SS-Gebirgs-Division «Nord». Karelia"

I might have posted this one before, but I think it is so cool that it deserves to be shown again.

The base is a Red Army canteen with a bullet hole. It was found on the old battlefields in Karelia.

The figures used is a pair from one of Masterbox` Stalingrad sets. I ve painted them with Vallejo Model Color, a little bit of oil paint and Mig pigments. I used decals from Archer and the ground scatter is from Reality in Scale.