My Booknooks and Dioramas: The Alamo 1/1000 scale Diorama

I have always been fascinated by the Texas struggle for independence and the last stand at the Alamo. beginning with Disney's 1955 "Davey Crocket at the Alamo" and Republic Pictures' "The Last Command" the same year. Then came my favorite, John Wayne's "The Alamo" in 1960! I will never forget that experience, sitting in a lounge chair in the back of a pickup truck at the Bordertown Drive In Theater, freezing my little 8 year old butt off in November! But I didn't care because I was mesmerized! A month later I was ecstatic to find the Marx Alamo Playset under the Christmas tree! Wow!

Then along came the 2004 "The Alamo" movie with a bit less mythic depiction of the events, albeit more realistic. It was still good and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But it just doesn't hold the magic for me that the 1960 version does. While working on this project, I watched every one of these movies again in the order they came out and I still like them all.

To start with, I found a free 3D STL file on Thingyverse.com for the Alamo compound. I reduced and printed it out at 1/1000 scale. It wasn't very accurate so I cut it up to rebuild it. There are so many drawings and artist renditions of the original 1836 compound, and few of them match! so it was difficult to determine which was correct. Even the San Antonia mission park website has conflicting illustrations. I ended up taking what I considered to be the most consistent elements from all of them to configure my Alamo compound.

I started with a 10"x12"x1/4" foam sheet. Then I glued the modified compound to it and carved the arroyos and irrigation ditches. I then coated the whole thing with diluted black paint and ModPodge. I used vinyl spackle to contour and coat the foam, and another ModPodge coat over that. I used a base coat of earth brown, followed by successive dry brushing of brown tan, trail tan, and desert dune. The trees are twisted strand wire frames coated with white modeling putty, and PVA glued foam flock leaves. The sage and mesquite are pieces of painted lichen. The abatis are made of dried weeds from the yard as well as the represented cut stumps the defenders obtained them from. The palisade wall portions are reduced printed photos, glued together back to back over heavy bond card. I also had to add additional gun platforms and stairs or ramps in places. The cannon were difficult at this scale and I did the best I could using bits of card and monofilament fishing line. They are a bit large for the scale. The defenders are all 1/800 scale Eduard photo-etched naval figures painted as Texicans. Their guns are all bristles from a shoe brush. I could not find any troops to represent the massed Mexican army attackers that satisfied what I was looking for, so I decided to stop here and move on to other projects. Sometime in the future I may find the perfect solution. I hope you like it.