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Hello All! It has been a while since I have gotten to do any serious miniatures projects, my last one being an aborted attempt at retro space marines (I got frustrated with 40k and sold my entire collection) However, I have since gotten the urge to start painting again and having recently gotten interested in Warlord Games' Bolt Action! Having already some experience with painting WWII through Flames of War, I decided I would try something new -- An Italian Army.
Why Italians? Well, because I have never done them before. In the past, I have painted WWII Brits, Germans, Americans, Russians and Japanese but I don't have a lot of familiarity with the Italian involvement in WWII, so this gives me a new area to research. At any rate, I have placed several orders and now have a sizable Italian Platoon on the way. The vanguard arrived yesterday in the form of an M13/40 Tank Kit from Blitzkrieg miniatures. This was my first purchase from them and I have to say I was impressed by the model. It has plenty of detail, didn't require a lot of cleanup and took all of three minutes to assemble.

I couldn't help but paint it right up. Here are the results.



So there it is. It was a lot of fun to paint and I can hardly wait for the rest of my stuff to arrive!
Comments and Feedback are always welcome.
Cheers.

Nice paintjob. Keep at it!

Reinforcements have Arrived! ...which is good, because a lone M13/40 would not have made a fantastic army. The main wave of my Italian army arrived today in the form of an infantry section, HQ, 2x Breda Machine gun teams, 2x Elefantino light anti tank guns, a medium mortar, an additional M13/40 and an AB41 armored car. All of the models are by Warlord Games. I am still waiting for 2 additional infantry sections to complete the force. I also have 2 additional M13/40s coming to give me enough tanks for a basic Tank War game.

I opted for regular Italian army as opposed to parachutists or bersigilieri troops because I feel like they get less love than the elite formations. Also, I have decided to somewhat ahistorically paint them in there green-grey uniforms as opposed to the desert colors I usually see done. I was mainly going for a Force based around the Sicily invasion, but I also wanted the M13/40s so decided to throw history out the window on that one (I think the only Italian tanks on Sicily were captured French R35's?)
Anyway, me being a treadhead and all, I assembled my tanks at the first possible moment.

They were not as easy to put together as the blitzkrieg one and were somewhat more difficult to clean up, but all in all they are solid kits.
For anyone interested on how the two companies tanks compare to one another, I have included some pictures here as well.


The Warlord Tank seems to be a bit taller, but other than that I think the tanks fit well together and have similar levels of detail.
Well, that's it for today. Stay tuned for more Italian goodness to come. As always comments and feedback are welcome.
Cheers

Okay, so today I painted up my first Italian infantry figure. Being used to painting Germans with their maddening array of camoflage and such, I found this one a refreshingly simple paint job. What do you all think?

I like them both good job man

Okay, so It's been a few days, but I have tried to remain productive towards my goal of a fully painted and assembled Italian Army. To that end I have managed to crank out a few more finished models (except for static grass), and have several more nearing completion. I took a picture but did not realize until afterwards that the composition of the shot made it look almost comical.

It sort of looks like the officer and NCO in front are ordering some sort of crazy charge while the two rifle men behind prepare to mutiny by shooting them. The third man simply seems unsure of what is going on.
At any rate, I am hyperactive and generally unable to focus on any one project for a lenghty period of time (i.e. a week...) so on a whim I also painted up a British Sherman V I got on a shopping spree from Blitzkrieg miniatures. This one is 1/48th scale which is noticeably larger than the 1/56th scale models that Warlord sells. It is still a good fit for most of the infantry models in bolt action, but will not blend well with other tanks of the smaller scale.



I did not have any decals and am not super familiar with British tank markings, so a rapid combination of google-searching and freehand provided the detailing. I think this tank is supposed to be from one of the guards units in Normandy, but am not certain. It's not fantastic work, but I think it gives the right feel.
Anyway, let me know what you all think.
Until next time.

Insomnia is usually bad... but in this instance I decided to use it to my advantage. I finished this guy at about five in the morning while watching parks and rec on netflix. It's another 1/48th scale from Blitzkrieg Miniatures.

I was so thrilled with my initial purchase of an Italian tank from them that I went a little crazy and bought several platoon's worth of Italian, British, U.S. and German tank kits, which amounts to my miniatures budget for the next six months or so. At any rate, I don't have decals so all the markings are freehand again. I could be happier with the results -- those stars with the circles around them are hard to pull of freehand, plus its not easy getting the size consistent. It looks fine from arms length though, so I can live with it.


Comments and feedback are always welcome.
Cheers.

Great looking tanks and troops there. The freehand looks perfect, especially the stars on the tanks.

It's nice to see some historicals on Dakka for a change

Okay, so a few things here: First, thanks for all those who left kind comments on here. It really does help keep me motivated to keep painting. Secondly, I have come to terms with the fact that I am not the kind of person who finishes projects all in one go, but instead will simply bounce around painting anything that captures my interest. It is my hope that this will eventually result in fully painted armies if I wait long enough. Lastly, I have painted up an antagonist for the Sherman tanks I have previously painted. The dreaded Tiger tank. (along with some buildings, just because.)

More to come.
Cheers

Could you give a run down on the colors you used on the Tiger tank please? A tutorial would be even better!

Sure. I've got another two tigers to paint up. Although I'm not certain, can I do a tutorial here or should it go somewhere else on dakka?

Do it here. Heck it's part of the thread.

Okay, so at Forlorn's request I have done a quick tutorial of how I painted the Tiger tank from the previous post.
Stage 1: I undercoated the model with black spray paint. (I didn't include a picture, because I had already started on the basecoat and also -- undercoated models are boring)
Stage 2: I basecoated everything but the treads in Vallejo Middlestone (VMC 822).

Stage 3: When the basecoat was dry, I applied the striping camouflage pattern with Vallejo Reflective Green (VMC 890) . As for the pattern itself, the only way I can think to describe it is like rivers. I paint a curving line, then branch out into other curving lines. I find it is best if the sides of the tank mostly end up in a sort of striped pattern, with more elaborate curves on the turret top and front of the tank. You will want your paint a little watered down for this -- so it will flow well -- but not so much that it settles in the recesses. I mostly accomplished this by dipping my brush in my water jar before putting it in the paint as opposed to directly watering the paint down.

Stage 4: When the camo was dry, I painted the treads of the tank with Citadel Steel Legion Drab (an alternative to this is Vallejo Flat Earth) I also painted the tools shafts with Citadel Mournfang Brown and the metal bits with Vallejo Gunmetal Grey (VMC863). If you want, when the tracks are dry, you can also drybrush them with the Gunmetal Grey.

Stage 5: I applied a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone Ink to the entire model. This model being an early model Tiger without the zimmeritt paste, I had to be careful not to let it pool to much on the flat surfaces, although I tended to let it pool quite a bit on the road wheels as this gave them a grimy look. (when painting models with zimmerit, the texture will soak up a lot of wash and give the model an overall darker appearance.)

Stage 6: I gave the wash plenty of time to dry. When it did, I gave the model a dry brush of Vallejo German Camo Beige (VMC821) to pick out the edges and smooth out the wash. Also, this was drybrushed more heavily on the tracks, as this gives them a dried mud appearance. I also applied a good amount of Army Painter Dark Tone Ink (not watered down, to the gun barrel to give it a battle worn appearance.

And That's It. Hope this helps. For convenience sake, I have listed the paints used here at the end for copy/paste purposes.
Vallejo: Middlestone (882), Reflective Green (890), German Camo Beige, (821) Gunmetal Grey (863)
Citadel: Steel Legion Drab, Mournfang Brown
Army Painter -- Strong Tone Ink, Dark Tone Ink
More to come,
Cheers.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Okaaaay... so insomnia again... I guess I'll paint some more stuff... and blog about it... Tonight I turned my insomnia-fueled painting fury at one of my German Grenadiers from Warlord Games plastic set. He needs based, but I think I like the paint job.


I also knocked out a Valentine MK II from my blitzkrieg miniatures buying binge. I figured it would see the most usefulness as an early/mid war soviet vehicle so I painted it up in lend-lease colors.

C & C always welcome.
Cheers.

Okay. So the whole reason I started this blog in the first place was to give some focus to my painting with the goal of actually having a complete army to take to the tabletop. My Italian army was supposed to be the focus, but for some reason the bulk of the main infantry has not arrived and the store that I bought them from could not find another supplier to get them from. No matter. I cancelled that order and bought THESE!


Now my primary antagonist (i.e. my little brother, who I have finally introduced to the myriad joys of wargaming) will be the Americans, so I decided to the Germans to the table first. To this end, I have spent my freetime of the last three days assembling and basing the figures until they are almost entirely complete (the only missing element being the PaK 40 antitank gun). But words are boring, so without further ado -- PICTURES!
First up is the command squad. Now bolt action has some lax rules about weapons for the Command group so both my brother and I have lavishly equipped ours with submachine guns. ( I was nice and decided on these instead of the dreaded assault rifles). At any rate the squad has -- what is the expression? -- loads o' dakka?

Next comes the sniper team, ready to plug my some enemy officers or ruin a mortar team's day.

I assembled all of my infantry squads with a similar theme -- two special weapons, a LMG, two panzerfausts and a gesturing NCO. I also copied a lot of the great conversion ideas they had in an article on Warlord's website, which let me get some more mileage out of the poses.




I had some extra bits from this kit and both a german box and Assault on Normandy kit that I already had so I added this additional squad armed almost entirely with assault rifles which I can use as Volksgrenadiers or Veterans or simply swap into other squads to add additional special weapons if I want to.

Also included in the box were a Hetzer Tank Destroyer and Mortar and HMG teams.



The weapons teams will eventually go on 60mm bases, but I have hot-glued them to individual bases for ease of painting.
... and that's the army! Now I hope to paint this completely before get distracted and move on to another project. Help me stay strong Dakka Brothers and Sisters!
Comments always welcome.
Cheers.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Update: It's been a productive Sunday. We had good weather, so I was able to get everything primed and I've also managed to paint the command group.

I hope you enjoy them. More to come.

Update: Sniper Team Finished.

Nice!

Update: 1st Squad Painted!

This was my first attempt at batch painting. It was a bit tedious, but I finished this lot in about six hours over three different painting sessions, so I feel it was pretty efficient and I do like how they turned out.
More to come.

Update: Okay, so it's been a good week for painting. I've managed to finish another squad along with my MMG and Mortar Teams.



My brother and I are going to play a game on Saturday evening, so I have just managed to finish the first 500 pts in time. Not bad, considering I received the army box only a week ago.
We'll now see how these guys do up against American G.I.s...