Carabinieri Patrol

[Santi Pérez]

As promised, I'm going to give a detailed overview of all the stages involved in creating the diorama that was my entry in the 54th Painting Competition and which won me the Silver Brush thanks to the votes of you, the forum members.

I have decided to post all this information in this ‘Work in progress’ section, reserving the final pictures of the complete diorama for the ‘Gallery’ section.

Following the working methodology developed over my 35 years as a secondary school teacher, I will present all the information organised into successive chapters and supplemented with all the pictures I took throughout the project.

I trust that you will enjoy the different sections of this story almost as much as I did while I was working on it.

As an introduction, I am including two pictures of the diorama, one of the two I sent to Peter for the competition and another that I took later when I had more time. As you can see, they are slightly different, mainly due to the backgrounds (black and white, respectively) and light sources I used on both occasions:




INSPIRATION

The first step in any new project is to come up with an idea of what you want to represent. In this case, I had two sources of inspiration that could be combined very well.

Some time before, I had found and bought a nice Matchbox car in a toy shop. It was a 1/64 scale Alfa Romeo Giulia.



On the other hand, a Spanish television channel was broadcasting an Italian series produced by RAI (Radiotelevisione italiana), which I have always loved for its great sense of humour and its defence of human values such as friendship, love, effort, compassion, etc. It's called ‘Don Matteo’ and stars Terence Hill.

It's about a priest in a beautiful medieval Italian village who is friends with a Carabinieri Maresciallo (roughly equivalent to Sergeant) and helps him solve various cases, always under the watchful eye of the police station Captain, who is a little jealous of the priest's abilities.




Combining both elements gave rise to the idea for the project: I would turn the Matchbox car into a Carabinieri patrol car and would have to complete it with a couple of figures, all in a suitable setting.

To be continued...

Santi.

[Iceman1964]

Santi,
the fact that the diorama is your was clear to me since the first look, the style is unmistakable
Happy to follow now the "how you made it" .

Don Matteo is very popular here in Italy, last year it's was broadcasted the 14th season and now they are preparing for next year the 15th, even if since 13th season Terence Hill left the program (understandable...he's now 86 years old !).
Enrico

[Santi Pérez]

Thank you, Enrico. I hope you enjoy this report because I think it's going to have quite a few chapters.

Since I saw the first episode of ‘Don Matteo’, I consider myself an unconditional fan of the series. Unfortunately, here in Spain, only two private television channels have aired some of the series' seasons. They premiered it as a big new release in 2021! (more than 20 years after its original premiere in Italy) and have only aired the first eight seasons on free-to-air television. Seasons nine and ten appeared on a pay-TV channel, and the rest have never been released.

Despite everything, I haven't lost hope of seeing them one day, preferably dubbed into Spanish, although with a little effort I could also enjoy them in the original Italian version.

Best regards, my friend.

Santi.

[Susofrick]

It was the mouse that got me! Great use of it, much better than the ones on our balcony (no, I am not going to send you any of them!) Very cool work and great fun!

[Michael Robert]

Hi Santi,
of course, your contribution to the painting contest was immediately reckognizable .
Love it and discovering the story behind is always interesting although I have never heard of this series - never shown neither in France nor in Germany.
Today we have so many series on pay-TV and streaming that we'll probably never remeber all we see. These older ones - more simple but rare at the time - always keep the feeling of the epoch, and for most of us who are not youngsters any longer they keep stirring good souvenirs.
Will see the making-of, but I start getting familiar with your technique - but I doubt that I could realize it the way you do.
Greetings - Ciao
Michael

[Santi Pérez]

It was the mouse that got me!...

You mean the mice, Wiking, because there isn't just one but two.

Hi Santi,
of course, your contribution to the painting contest was immediately reckognizable .
Love it and discovering the story behind is always interesting...

I will have to try to change my style somewhat, or I will not be able to participate anonymously in any more painting competitions. And get ready to follow the story, Michael, because there is still quite a lot left to tell.

...Will see the making-of, but I start getting familiar with your technique - but I doubt that I could realize it the way you do...

I imagine you are referring to my conversion technique, which I am quite proud of, because I consider my painting technique to be very ordinary, nothing spectacular.

Santi.

[C M Dodson]

Very nice indeed.

Inspector Montabano and the even better Ice Cold Murders spring to mind.

Happy modelling.

Chris

[santifernandez]

Nice scene Santi¡
Santi Bcn.

[Santi Pérez]

Thank you very much, Chris and Santi.

...Inspector Montabano and the even better Ice Cold Murders spring to mind...

In my family we have it all: if I am a big fan of "Don Matteo", my wife is a fan of "Il Commissario Montalbano".

And all this without forgetting the also very good RAI series "I bastardi di Pizzofalcone".

Santi.

[Santi Pérez]

Now we go with the second chapter of the making of the diorama.

REQUIRED ELEMENTS

With an idea of what I wanted to achieve, I set about selecting the necessary elements. There were going to be four: the base, the car, the figures, and some elements for the scenery.

For the first, I chose a wooden one from among those I had saved for future projects. The only requirement was that it fit the planned dimensions.

The car was the Matchbox I mentioned earlier, and for the figures I decided to use some from the Caesar Miniatures Modern PRC PLA Troops set, as they are easy to convert, and I had already used one of them for my entry in the previous painting competition:

http://bennosfiguresforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=26284&p=290652&hilit=God+save+the+Queen#p290652

I chose the following figure, basically because he’s wearing a peaked cap and a shirt with a tie under his tunic:



With those three elements I made an outline of the diorama to study its best arrangement on the base:



To enrich the set a bit, I decided to also include a piece of sidewalk and three elements on it (a trash can, a traffic sign, and a pair of rats).

The traffic sign I built from scratch from an image I found online and printed on adhesive paper, which I glued onto a frame made from two pieces of thin cardboard.

I got the sidewalk from the Bush H0 Pavements Plastic Sheets set, the trash can from the Balaton Modell 1/72 Dustbin set and the rats are from the Bush H0 Small Animals set:



To be continued...

Santi.

[MABO]

This is what I call a didactic presentation of a project.

[Santi Pérez]

This is what I call a didactic presentation of a project.

Thanks, Jan.

After many days without being able to open the forum website, I now move on to the next chapter.

RESEARCH

The online research involved both the patrol car and the Carabinieri figures, as the goal was to represent them as faithfully as possible to their actual, current appearance.

Among the dozens of pictures I found showing the current appearance of the Carabinieri vehicles, I selected the following:







Regarding the Carabinieri, I opted for the traditional uniform that everyone knows and selected these images that I thought best represented it:





The next chapter will be dedicated to the completion of the base with its accompanying elements.

To be continued...

Santi.

[Santi Pérez]

THE BASE AND ITS ACCOMPANYING ELEMENTS

The first step was to glue a piece of sidewalk (already painted black) to one corner of the base and cover the rest of the surface with fine sand, filling the gaps between the grains with white glue to create a representation of the asphalt of the road:





The sidewalk tiles were then painted light grey and the road black:





In the next step, the tiles were painted sky grey and the other three elements assembled and painted separately were glued onto the sidewalk: the traffic sign, the trash can and the two rats. As mentioned above, I made the traffic sign from two pieces of cardboard glued together and painted silver, with the sign design printed on adhesive paper and glued on top:





Finally, the road was drybrushed with dark grey:






Here are some detailed pictures of the accessories on the sidewalk (a piece of dark green towel or cloth with two white stripes was added to the back of the trash can):





Although not visible in the previous pictures, a decal with the universal recycling symbol was added to the trash can, as seen in this image:



To be continued...

Santi.

[MABO]

The base looks really perfect. Very clean as well, but this is the consequence of your clean sharp and perfect painting style.

[Kekso]

I agree, base is great. Without painted asphalt it looks even better if you ask me.

[sberry]

When I returned to the forum after a long absence, I noticed that you have created yet another masterpiece. Not as large as the Royal Guard Band, but in the same excellent style.
And I agree with all the other comments: As long as you keep creating these gems, it will be impossible for you to submit a post anonymously – everyone will immediately recognize the master's signature!

[Santi Pérez]

Thank you very much for your kind words, my friends (I'm glad to see you here again, Stephan).

I agree, base is great. Without painted asphalt it looks even better if you ask me.

You may be right, Dalibor, but I wanted to try to achieve the rough appearance of black asphalt on the road and make it a little more complicated than leaving the surface smooth and painted black.

The next chapter will be devoted to the patrol car.

Santi.

[Iceman1964]

Great description Santi, I like the "step-by-step" details !!

[Santi Pérez]

Great description Santi, I like the "step-by-step" details !!

Thank you, Enrico, I'm glad to hear that.

Here's the next chapter.

THE PATROL CAR

The first step was to add three elements to the original car: the front number plate holder, which on Alfa Romeo models is located on the side (made from a piece of cardboard), two headlights (made from two circular plastic discs) and the rear roof antenna (made from a piece of copper wire), all three reinforced with white glue:





Next, I did a test with the decals that would decorate the finished car. Once I had found and selected them on the internet, I printed them on self-adhesive paper, cut them out and stuck them on the unpainted car:









The three emergency lights on the car roof were also added at this stage. Although I didn't take any pictures of these elements, they were made of modelling clay reinforced with white glue.

Next, I painted the car with the base colours, after removing the stickers from the surface (I only kept the four red stripes on the sides and front, as I found it easier to paint them than to stick on such long, thin decals afterwards):





On top of the previous layer, I added the rest of the colours (including the metal part of the wheels) and proceeded to stick on the decals. I then applied a gloss varnish, covering the wheels and the open front windows to prevent them from being affected by the spray:




The final result was as follows:










To be continued...

Santi.

[sberry]

Thank you very much for this entertaining step-by-step tutorial. And it is quite interesting to see that the minor difference in scales – 1/64 for the car vs. 1/72 for the figures – is not obvious at all in the final result.

But one mystery remains: Why has this Don Matteo series never been shown on German TV or any streaming platform, given that Terence Hill was really a popular actor here? It looks quite fun.