(… or the importance of doing your research properly)

I’ve not posted for a while but I am doing things over the last few week. Most recently I’ve been working on more of the Perry Miniatures Vichy French for North Africa and Madagascar. For a change of pace I picked up this 75mm gun and crew which had actually been started last year.

The gun itself went together easily enough but it’s a pretty simple model and, for logical enough reasons, misses out a lot of the detail behind the gun shield. I set about adding some of the more prominent parts and in about 15 minutes the whole thing looked busier and a bit closer to the real thing. I was dead pleased with myself for doing this so quickly only to find far better reference for what should be behind there (hint – pictures of restored guns are perhaps not the best reference). So alas I couldn’t leave it that way and some of that was stripped away and more detail added. The ‘metal’ photos below show the earlier version before this was done.

The crew needed to be wrangled slightly to make them fit around the new struts and things (I actually left a strut out on the gunners side so he could fit OK). Really there’s only the basing left to do and some minor painting corrections. The satchel bag worn by one of the gunners, and by the infantry generally, should have proper satchel leather reinforcement and leather buckle straps. I assumed this was plain canvas like the earlier ones, but again better reference prevails.

I’m going for quite a heavy-lined look for these figures. The whole army is relatively quickly painted (more examples in previous post) and I want them to pop nicely on the table. I felt that for an army that I’ll be using with my kids this more ‘graphic’ look is appropriate.