28mm Italian vehicles & artillery

[James Morris]

Having had most of these models sat around for 2 years, I finally got them painted and photographed in the summer.  The armoured car is very obsolete by WW2 but still saw service in East Africa!



Here's a Lancia IZM armoured car - with a paint job perhaps worthy of an ice-cream van - accompanied by the slightly more deadly L3 Lanciaflamme light tank.  The armoured car is by Force of Arms (though may now be owned by Warlord); the tankette is an Empress model.





Next up are a pair of Empress Italian artillery pieces (Canone do 75/27) from their Abyssinia range.  I have never seen quite so many tiny pieces in a metal kit - being a recent convert to gaming with guns in the modern era, these defeated me on more than one occasion.  Fortunately an email to Empress secured a quick reply from Paul Eaglestone who has recently put a step-by-step assembly guide on his blog (down the bottom of the page):
http://pdesplace.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2011-07-08T03:40:00-07:00&max-results=50&start=26&by-date=false

Without this, I would have been sunk!  Thanks Paul.  They are not for the faint-hearted, which is a shame, as they make up into super little models.





I've left a space on the bases as I'd like to add some ammo boxes and general rammel at some point!



Paint-job-wise, I went for a grey-green on the guns, as I don't think many were painted in sand colours at all, at least not in 1940-1.



When I was assembling the two guns, I found this in my bits box; it's a Force of Arms 75mm gun of some description sold for the SCW.  While not an exact match for the Canone da 75/27, it was close enough for me to assemble and paint up as a smashed-up piece for a little extra scenery.

[Helen]

Lovely work James yet again.

I've ordered the Perries Tankette so I would be interested in seeing how this compares with all the other Italian tankettes on the market.

Cheers,

Helen

[mrtn]

Both these and your infantry are looking great.

[Happy Wanderer]

Excellent stuff James,

I have all these models in the painting queue. Your high contrast paint style really lifts the detail on the models...very nice.

What is the link to Paul's blog so I may use the gun model description as well?....I'm sure it'll be useful.

Cheers

Happy Wanderer

[James Morris]

Sorry, you're right, I've added the link to the post above in the right place.  I'm surprised there isn't a link on the Empress website, really.

Helen, it would be fascinating to compare Empress and Perry L3s, but as I already own 7 of the Empress ones I'm not going to be buying any more at the moment!  I'll see if I come across some in my travels.

[von Lucky]

Beautiful painting.

The Lancia was used by the Germans for anti-partisan duties when they captured one off the Italians. What's not to love about it?

[Gothic Line]

 Amazing pictures!!!! That Lancia is probably the Armored car with the longest service yet !
 Really like the colors and atmosphere is just right!!!!!

[Marine0846]

Super looking figures.
Love them and the guns.