Tuesday, 11 February 2014

A Parcel From The Other Side Of The World

Today I received, from that estimable gent Paul F, a rather splendid bit of post! It contained a cool tee-shirt badged with an RNZAF roundel and in the right size - good guess, chumrade! But that wasn't all, oh no. The piece de resistance was a glorious kit for a Mk 1 Grant tank in 1/72. I'm already looking forward to building this particular toy once the Italians are sorted.

Thank you, chumrade!

A T-Shirt

A Mk1 Grant



Sunday, 2 February 2014

Project M13/40 #3

Avanti con i carri armati!

I finished these on Friday but then real life intervened as it often does. Worry not, chumrades, a good time was had by all.

So, to match my earlier work on the Western Desert Force, the Italians have grown from a bit of infantry and couple of trucks to something like an armoured division of that period-ish. I'm still after one of those Italian AA guns on a truck, I think Italeri do it. Once that's built I'll do a post to show the assembled armoured might.

I undercoated the toys in brown rather than black and it paid off in terms of shading and being easier to cover larger areas. I then painted them up with Vallejo sand-green ochre which gave them an already worn look before any highlighting. The LOG column's windscreen is simply a dark blue/black mix and then a lighter blue worked into the corners while the paint is still wet. I really liked the Italian camo scheme of sand & cabbage so HQ and 2Bn got that treatment. High lights were done with Vallejo buff paint and a trimmed down brush as per normal. I also put a brown wash over the vehicles to get that 'the scrapyard's this way' look. The toys are all mounted on foam core with a sand and gravel mix as a ground cover.

The pictures:

HQ (M41)

1Bn (M13/40)

2Bn (M13/40)

3Bn (M11/39)
The Lee/Grant's even more rubbish little brother?

LOG & POL Columns

Armoured Fist!

PS A big hello to new blog members Mad Padre, Rebel Barracks and Irish Highlander. All their blogs are first class and well worth a look. Thanks for following, chaps!