Regio Esercito Color Set

Four shades of the Italian Royal Army

The Italian ground army entered the Second World War with its vehicles painted in a sand yellow base, over which irregular patches in green and brown were applied. This pattern went with armored cars and self-propelled guns in the North African theater, and the same approach then returned to the Italian peninsula. The set holds four shades with which such a scheme can be built.

The base tone is carried by the camouflage yellow, which is joined by two green-gray shades of differing lightness and a brown-red shading tone. Three of the colors are listed under standardized color reference numbers, so the shade is unambiguously determined and it does not matter what anyone chooses to call it.

What the set suits

• Armored cars and reconnaissance vehicles in a yellow base
• Self-propelled guns and tracked machines with a patched pattern
• Trucks and rear-area vehicles of the same army
• Shading the transitions between patches with the brown-red tone

A patched pattern is usually built from the lightest tone upward: first the whole surface is covered with the yellow, then once dry the green areas are added freehand or with a fine brush, and finally the brown parts come in. The brown-red shade serves at once as a shadow under the patches and in the seams, which makes the pattern settle into the surface visually instead of floating on it. Four bottles are a modest count, but given that the historic pattern worked with only a few tones, that is enough for a faithful rendering.