Logo

Ciao a tutti,

While ago, I found on a friend's blog  a picture from the Life magazine, where a tank crew was posing on a Sherman, and among them one of the guys was wearing a top hat.

I then decided to sculpt this project, and while thinking I asked a friend, Vittorio Arena to build the tank wedge.

He did an excellent job, the only issue is with the cast numbers, which we recently find out where different from the one he did, but this will be an easy correction.

Well, since Vittorio finished the wedge it took 6/7 months before I started to model the figure and I sculpted it over a weekend!!!!

I got so hooked up to the project that I couldn't stop sculpting.

The head is a modified piece from Hornet, the hands and boots are from Friulmodelismo, all the rest is scratch.

Now I have to get going and start painting this little fella, but I'm working on another secret project...stay tuned.

Well I guess I'll handover the wedge to Vittorio so he can amend the mistakes and painting it.

That's all for now, let me know what you think.

Ciao

Giovanni

Ciao a tutti,

I just finished this very ambitious project (for my skills!!), an Italian tanker with an Italian L6 tank turret during the Russian campaign.

Ambitious because this is my second tank (well a part of it this time) I've ever done; also been able to place the turret with the figure in the minimum space possible and being able to tell a story was another great challenge, last but not least, paint this 1/35 miniature with the tiny details is painful sometimes!

The figure is from Alpine range and was given to me my the owner of the company himself as a gift, I've helped him out with some information about the uniform and he kindly sent me few figures from his range.

The figure is great, incredible details, perfect casting, if I have to find a problem is related toth the double socks, which I had to modify as you can't really tell they actually are double socks from the sculpture and box art, also, the jacket should have more buttons, but this may have been a bespoke jacket, not unseen for officials alike.

The turret and the fuel tank are from Model Victoria, quite expensive bits, but amazing quality and details as well.

The wood box is from Plusmodel and all the tools are plastic kit from a company called Diopark, very nice and you can find all sort of tools.

As for the paint I used my usual technique for the figure, just made an experiment for the leather coat, basically I painted the worn parts with a really light colour, using ochre, Naples yellow even white, when all dried I did paint over glazes of burnt sienna and raw umber.

Talking about the ground work and tank I did apply the technique used by the great modellers, like Mig, Adam Wilder, Mike Rinaldi and all the other great guys that are out there.

To make things easy, I did apply a winter camouflage, this has been the cherry on the cake!

Overall has been great, I loved every bit of this project and I'll try to work on more figure/ tanks project in the future.

I hope you like it, please let me know what you think.

Grazie.

Giovanni

Ciao a tutti,

I've finally managed to finish my first bust, the great Young sculpture the paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne.

Has been a fantastic discovery and I really recommend everyone to try a bust, at least once.

Here below you can find the pictures of the bust, let me know what you think!

Ciao

Ciao a tutti,

I'm keep on painting this magnificent bust, face, helmet, jacket, life jacket and Thompson are almost complete, each of these has few minor things to fix or paint.

I've used a new method to paint the wooden stock of the gun:

First I painted the stock with a basecoat of a reddish brown, then I did paint random stripes with 3 different colours (a light ochre, a mid brown and a very dark black/brown) over the basecoat.

Once all was dry I took the Burnt Sienna oil colour out of the tube and applied a thick layer; because the oils are transparent by nature, the acrylics base can be seen throug the oil colour !!

It took me 10-15 minutes to achieve this, I then added few marks in oils and once dry I will make the final adjustments.

Hope you like it.

Ciao

Giovanni