Late summer, 1941, near Vinnytsia in the Soviet Union, a Hungarian cavalry patrol ride past an abadoned Soviet T-26.
A small vignette based on a photograph in the book 'The Cavalry of WWII' (Piekalkiewicz). Horses are an often neglected part of the war effort on all sides and mounted units are completely forgotten aside from the legendary (and probably fictional) tales of horseback charges against tanks, so I have for a while wanted to make some cavalry scenes based on real military operations.
I had some Arrowhead Minatures whitemetal cavalry figures and although I think they are listed as Soviet soldiers, their mix of attire and hats best matched the Hungarian riders in the photo. Paint references were taken from museum photos with a nice khaki scheme.
The T-26 is also from Arrowhead and is painted based on a photo from 1941.
The white line and number hand were painted to give a hurried, field applied look. A fair amount of weathering was applied to reflect a recently abandoned vehicle.
The girl and the pigs were added to reflect the human aspect of war, that life had to go on and for civilians in the occupied lands, there was no escape from the daily reminder of the war.
The base itself is my standard 10x10cm canvas, the roadway made up with layers of pigment. Careful placement had to be made to blend in the horse hooves - many of which were damaged extracting them off the white metal bases and had to be rebuilt in-situ with putty.
The trees are model railway pieces, blended into the base with Duluxe Materials terrain paste.
The final touch was to add a small feline onto the tank, one of the lovely resin cats from Heroes Models.
