How I Met the Little Prince

The Storry

30. December 1939, in thick fog over the desert in Libya, a two-man French crew in their Simoune C-630 with the F-ANRY imatriculation makes an emergency landing. They find themselves in the middle of a wasteland where there seems to be nothing for miles except a vast desert. The already unpleasant prospect is complicated by the fact that they have only two grapefruits, a thermos of coffee and a bottle of wine. They set off on a little detour to see if any help can be sought. But after three days they are exhausted. The unpleasant symptoms of severe dehydration set in and the two survivors experience progressively stronger hallucinations. After four days they are found on the verge of death by a passing Bedouin who arranges for their rescue. The two survivors are the mechanic and navigator André Prévot and the pilot of the plane Antonie de Saint-Exupéry

Exupéry later transformed this powerful experience into the award-winning book Wind, Sand and Stars.

Last but not least, the reference to this event in his life is embedded in book The Little Prince

The Idea

The very first thing I knew was what the base would look like. It's going to be a lamb box, that iconic three-hole box. Next, I wanted to hint at Exupéry's "possible" confrontation with the mysterious being by having the figure outside the "frame" and casting only a shadow, a kind of phantom, in the diorama. That was the idea... the realisation was more complicated...

Historical photo of real situation and inspiration for diorama taken from side: https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/antoine-de-saint-exupery/

(I do not know if posing the historical reference photo from this side is allowed)

• Airplane model kit by Heller - Caudron C-635 1/72
• little piece of XPS styrofoam
• ussual modellers stuff (Acrylic colours, airbrush, brushes, pliers
• UHU glue
• Acrylic gel for terrain (Rough terrain and desert)
• white plaster
• other tools and glues for KIT's
• www.deepl.com/translator for translation from Czech to English :-)

The first cut was in the engine section. I cut a hole, made a bulkhead from paper, and make the engine from various surplus wheels, covers and other parts and debries from previous panes KIT's. The fuselage itself didn't fit very well, and fitting it with the transparent cockpit was quite tricky job, and took a lot of puttying and sanding. In the end I somehow got it to fit. I also cut off the tail rudders and glued them in the offset positions as per the photos.

The wing was worse. In the end I somehow sawed the original one from the kit. I used a glue and a tea box to create the inner ribs and used a vinyl adhesive film as a cover. The original wing was wood with a canvas covering. I covered the trailing edge with tinfoil, as well as the front of the nose where I made "crumpled" sheets also from a piece of tin alu-foil. I sprayed everything with Surfacer and painted the top half of the fuselage with creamy white paint.

For scuffing purposes, I sprayed the nose with silver and one coat of Worn effect (for peeling red later) I masked the top half and paint it red. Red is a classic case of paint that covers poorly, so there were many coats. I did the wood core chalk with a brush to evoke the plywood texture....it's small, you can't see much. Good for me :-)

In the meantime, while the paint was drying, I got to work on the backing. I cut another piece of styrofoam and used plaster as the first layer of relief. Over that I applied AK's Rough Terrain acrylic gel (quick, clean painless) The surface looks rough, rocky. I mixed up some desert paint and gradually started tinting the base. This is my favorite part 🙂 To soften the surface and add realism, I also applied a topical layer of Desert sand acrylic gel (which is already sand colored) I still airbrushed the pad a few more times to break up the uniformity of the shades.

Since I had such a great photographic background and story, there was one more detail to be worked out. And that is the immatriculation of F-ANRY. In the box there was an F-ANRO or F-ANXM (they were different aircraft). Coincidentally a cutting plotter Silhouette Portrait 2 had landed in our home in the meantime, so a test of the masks for the replacement decals was in order. I cut it in plain vinyl, but it worked 🙂

Figures are not my cup of tea, but with liquid mascol(Humbrol) and a few coats of paint, it worked well in the end. I enhanced the final look with some light dusting on the clothes.

The last little detail was the representation of the shadow of the Little Prince. It was only the second time it was "successful". It's hard to spray into the sand, even through the stencil. "It could have been worse, it wasn't bad..." so the third attempt didn't happen 🙂

In the meantime I stitched the box, for which I used the bottom of the box from another airplane kit box. I cut those three iconic holes in it and used UHU to glue the styrofoam backing into the box. I then filled the gaps between the edges with Sandy desert paste.

And now it's time to take a look at the final result :-)

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and found the result inspiring.