Contrast and Compare: MW Italians – Breakthrough Assault

Greetings, today I shall be continuing my series of articles on quickly paining armies using a mix of contrast paints and traditional methods.

This week I decided to do a new Italian force. The army consists of two rifle platoons, light mortars, 82mm mortars and 47mm guns. I also wanted to be able to field an Engineer Company as well so got the extra light mortars (two are in each platoon) plus four flamethrower stands.

I tested a couple of models with different undercoats and contrast mixes for the uniform. I decided that a white base prime coat worked best. At 15mm a bright model often works better.

Before under coating, all the bases received a coat of Vallejo pumice and then I pushed the models in it using a sculpting tool to smooth the pumice around the base. When completely dry this holds the base like glue would.

As stated, above a white undercoat is applied. I use white primer from Wilkinson’s; its only about 4 quid and works perfectly.

My forvourite use of contrast paint is how well it works for flesh.

Next I start with flesh. I start with lighter areas as it speeds up the final uniform step later on. Darkoath Flesh contrast paint is used.

Then we move onto Black Templar contrast for the boots and feather in the helmets.

All weapons and anything wood get contrast Snakebite Leather.

Webbing is Plaguebearer Flesh. Don’t worry this tones down later.

Getting the green ochre colour for the uniform requires mixing. Its approximately 3:1 Skeleton Horde and Iyanden Yellow (both contrasts). This goes over the rest of the model.

With that done I switch to normal paints and use boltgun metal by Citadel for the rifle metal parts, light grey and brown for the bed rolls and dark green for the ammo boxes, shells & radios.

To be honest they look good here but I wanted to go a bit further for not much more effort. I washed the whole model in Nuln Oil (Black Wash) and then gave a quick layer of Vallejo Green Ochre on the helmets and top of the sleeves.

Now its time for bases. Vallejo Iraqi Sand is applied to the whole base and then a dry brush of Dark Sand with a little white. I applied GF9 Dead Grass in patches and some flowers to mark command stands on the Guns and mortars.