One of my hobbies is model building, and studying history, especially military history. I scratch built and kit bashed this micro-diorama a few years ago. It depicts a basic ship's gun on a tall ship, circa the War of 1812. Scratch building is always an interesting challenge, as it combines modeling, sculpture, and historical research to create a representational model. Kit bashing, on the other hand, it taking apart what is a commercially created model in order to use the parts to create something different. It takes patience, but I actually find it rather relaxing. It offers a respite from having to worry about being commercial, or even trying to be extremely deep.
When I create sculpture, I am constantly thinking about form, materials, how it all goes together, and how I want it to represent my concepts and ideas, and how they are communicated. When I model, it is essentially brain candy. I know historians will disagree with me, but history is history, and fact is fact. Maneuvers may be debated, motivations questioned, and decisions and their reasoning may be pondered over, but those are all human concerns. The nice thing about materials research, is that when a soldier's uniform is blue, that is just that. It is difficult to argue a point when the object you are studying is at hand. When I create models, I try to recreate a representation of the past, and the thinking is more about materials and the final aesthetics. What I am trying to represent is just that, I am making a recreation of an existing object. There is not necessarily a deeper meaning.
Until next time,
Andrew
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