'Emma' - A Diorama making use of the sloop-rigged smack kit, Emma C Berry (1866), from Model Shipways, 1/32 Scale.

The Ships Cat said:
you haven't put one peace of wood int' thole yet ROTF
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Page three and nothing done. Anyone would think I was working for the government. ;)

I won't start work on Emma until the woodwork is finished on Alert so it will be a few weeks yet unless I suddenly discover that youthful energy I put away somewhere about seven years ago and haven't been able to find since.
 
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I wonder if they all ran off to the same tropical isle somewhere between Eleuthera and New Providence, where yours are likely to pull up a beach chair next to mine under a beach umbrella with a tall cold sweaty Rum Punch in hand. :cool:
 
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You bet and I would be glad to discuss the needed skills for us old folks when it comes to model ships and boats. Those butt joints on the frames ain’t right. I would end up crushing them. You see I have duffasoidal tendencies. If it can be broken I will figure out how to do it.
 
Development of the Story​

I made a mistake today. I carried a heavy bag of books into the town for donating to the charity shop. Unfortunately it was too heavy. I was foolishly impatient. I could have taken half today, half tomorrow but I rushed the job without considering my arthritis. Fortunately this is a very minor problem and only affects my left hand but it still hurts when it's aggravated by overloading or overuse. It hurts now so there's no modelling for me today either on Emma or Alert.

I can still type in my very right handed fashion so lets start a conversation about the story that I can tell with Emma.

In post #8 @AndyA critiqued the scene on the box and correctly pointed out its illogical elements. I could see that John Fryant's diorama was fantastical. It works very well as a sales demo and in fact led to me buying the kit so well done John, but it's not a believable story to we modellers. Now, I've never been in a boatyard, and if I tried to do a boatyard scene, I'd make tons of mistakes, big and small. You and I would expect a story set in a boatyard to be non-fiction. If I set a ladder upside down, you'd all roll your eyes and laugh! So that's out.

I don't want to make non-fiction. I want to set the bar as high as I possibly can for the story, so that you won't notice how trashy the modelling might be. ROTF I would like this to be art, or even Art. There are as many definitions of art as there are people and my personal one is "a created object that deliberately communicates an emotional message from the creator to the observer." (please chip in with your views on this, it's always good for a conversation.) So it's going to be a fictional story, wiv metaphors an' stuff. Some say that fiction is where you find the really important truths...

If I want to communicate something real, true and emotional, then I have to feel it first. Living here with only my dog for company, a love story is out. Pity really because a romance ending with the happy couple sailing away into the sunset would have been a natural to Emma in her pleasure boat days. ;)

Then there's that horrible emotion, FEAR! That leads to ideas of shipwrecks, storms at sea, castaways and cannibalism, pirates. Adventure stuff. That's the kind of diorama I made as a kid when I poked hot needles into my Spitfire models to make bullet holes and added cotton wool smoke as they screamed out of the sky... I'm not adventurous anymore. I'm too old and decrepit for that, as the arthritis will testify.

Aha! can I do something emotional with old and decrepit?

derelict1.jpgDerelict4.jpegDerelict5.jpegderelict6.jpgderelict8.jpgDerelict9.JPG

Yes I can!

Those boats are how I feel at five in the morning when I'm getting up for the second time that night for a pee, and the flat's cold and my back aches and I catch a sight in the mirror of my hair sticking up at the back just like Dad's did when he suddenly became an old man.

Modelling the inevitable workings of entropy is a fascinating challenge and gives great scope for creative fun. I've done it with plastic kits but not yet on a wooden boat. You can't build a model and then age it to this extent, you have to work towards the final product right from the beginning. @serikoff wants the keel laid as soon as possible but it might be that I want a boat with a broken back, twisted in agony or one which sags in the middle, much as I do myself. :confused: If I can pull of a model like these photos, I have a metaphor for age, and decay, pain and death.

Which is just too darned horrible, so I need to be a bit more subtle than that. I still want an ancient boat but I need to lighten the mood a little. If I saw one of these hulks today while out for a walk (unlikely as I live in the highlands) I'd be very interested. I'd peer through the windows and take photos. I wouldn't get too near in case I became dirty.

However, if I had seen one of these hulks 57 years ago when I was ten years old, I'd be aboard it like a shot. I'd be a pirate. I'd be a fisherman, captain of the Titanic (same name evenROTF), trawlerman, explorer. I'd be playing. Was there ever a better playground for a kid? So we take a really old boat like Emma, and age her to the point of destruction and then people her with kids having fun at the very beginnings of their lives. Youth and age together is a good contrast, interesting but the poignancy of the old boat is swamped by the joy of the kids.

Kids are too cute. The children would blur the age and death theme too much. The story would be confused and lost. So, I need to guide the observers into thinking the way I want them to. I need to set then a strong example. I want them to see the scene through old and slightly melancholic eyes, so that they will understand the old/young contrast and what it means at an emotional level.

Close your eyes and imagine this...

There's a boat, an old fashioned one, lying abandoned on a shore somewhere, it's damaged. There's graffiti, some fire damage. You can see her ribs through spaces where planks have been torn off for camp fires. The whole thing is rotten with blistered paint, rust streaks. There's litter. A gang of half a dozen kids are playing on it. One's fishing off the side with his line in a bucket. Another one is trying to climb the bowsprit, the mast being long gone over the side. Another is reading Treasure Island.

As we look around, suddenly we notice in the shade, unnoticed on the shore is an old, old man. He's wearing a Captain's hat and an old pea-jacket. He looks at the scene and we see it all through his eyes. Is it his old boat? Is he reliving his sailing days? Or his childhood days hanging around the harbour? What does he feel when he sees his old boat that served him so well at sea, just a broken down wreck to amuse the children? There aren't an answers of course, it's up to the observer to make his own. Is that enough to make it art?

I like that scenario but I have another layer in mind. Let's call it Plan B. The problem is that I don't know whether it makes it better or worse. In Plan B, the old salty sea dog is in a wheelchair and accompanied by two adults. They are his children and the parents of the kids playing on the boat. The sailor stares at the boat and the children. The woman stands beside his wheelchair and the man is consulting his wristwatch in that universal symbol of 'I'm bored, let's go back to the hotel.' Now you have five people all interacting with each other. There's sailor grandfather, daughter, son-in-law, children and Emma the boat and I think that adds up to fifteen two way relationships. The thing is, it's not a short story anymore. It's turned into a novel and I'm not sure that one scene can carry that much meaning. Plan A is simpler.

I guess each of us will prefer either Plan A or B for reasons of our own. I'll make the decision eventually but I'd be very interested to hear your preferences.
 
I like where your going with this. My $0.02, but I'd go with either kids playing or the old man standing and looking, but not both. Maybe it's just the KISS principle, but I think the simpler the arrangement the stronger the emotion conveyed by it.

As I think about it, there would be a certain symmetry in the kids-at-play dio. Your ability to a mangy kit into a literal work of art mirrors the image of an old pleasure craft still giving pleasure long after her days afloat. It's time to stop typing when I start to wax poetic...
 
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I am thinking plan A. Being 70 puts things in perspective and I always enjoy watching the neighborhood rapscallions doing their best to improve the street. I know if I had seen an old boat just waiting to be climbed on when I was a kid I would have been on it like white on rice. In my youth the monkey bars were high enough to break a leg if you fell.
 
I’m leaning towards plan B. As the elderly sailor walks with a child and comes across the wreck. He describes the wreck to the child by all the amazing things it was capable of doing during its prime. But the child’s interest is attracted by a small flashy pleasure craft passing in the distance.
 
Smithy said:
Development of the Story​

I made a mistake today. I carried a heavy bag of books into the town for donating to the charity shop. Unfortunately it was too heavy. I was foolishly impatient. I could have taken half today, half tomorrow but I rushed the job without considering my arthritis. Fortunately this is a very minor problem and only affects my left hand but it still hurts when it's aggravated by overloading or overuse. It hurts now so there's no modelling for me today either on Emma or Alert.

I can still type in my very right handed fashion so lets start a conversation about the story that I can tell with Emma.

In post #8 @AndyA critiqued the scene on the box and correctly pointed out its illogical elements. I could see that John Fryant's diorama was fantastical. It works very well as a sales demo and in fact led to me buying the kit so well done John, but it's not a believable story to we modellers. Now, I've never been in a boatyard, and if I tried to do a boatyard scene, I'd make tons of mistakes, big and small. You and I would expect a story set in a boatyard to be non-fiction. If I set a ladder upside down, you'd all roll your eyes and laugh! So that's out.

I don't want to make non-fiction. I want to set the bar as high as I possibly can for the story, so that you won't notice how trashy the modelling might be. ROTF I would like this to be art, or even Art. There are as many definitions of art as there are people and my personal one is "a created object that deliberately communicates an emotional message from the creator to the observer." (please chip in with your views on this, it's always good for a conversation.) So it's going to be a fictional story, wiv metaphors an' stuff. Some say that fiction is where you find the really important truths...

If I want to communicate something real, true and emotional, then I have to feel it first. Living here with only my dog for company, a love story is out. Pity really because a romance ending with the happy couple sailing away into the sunset would have been a natural to Emma in her pleasure boat days. ;)

Then there's that horrible emotion, FEAR! That leads to ideas of shipwrecks, storms at sea, castaways and cannibalism, pirates. Adventure stuff. That's the kind of diorama I made as a kid when I poked hot needles into my Spitfire models to make bullet holes and added cotton wool smoke as they screamed out of the sky... I'm not adventurous anymore. I'm too old and decrepit for that, as the arthritis will testify.

Aha! can I do something emotional with old and decrepit?

View attachment 483702View attachment 483706View attachment 483707View attachment 483708View attachment 483710View attachment 483711

Yes I can!

Those boats are how I feel at five in the morning when I'm getting up for the second time that night for a pee, and the flat's cold and my back aches and I catch a sight in the mirror of my hair sticking up at the back just like Dad's did when he suddenly became an old man.

Modelling the inevitable workings of entropy is a fascinating challenge and gives great scope for creative fun. I've done it with plastic kits but not yet on a wooden boat. You can't build a model and then age it to this extent, you have to work towards the final product right from the beginning. @serikoff wants the keel laid as soon as possible but it might be that I want a boat with a broken back, twisted in agony or one which sags in the middle, much as I do myself. :confused: If I can pull of a model like these photos, I have a metaphor for age, and decay, pain and death.

Which is just too darned horrible, so I need to be a bit more subtle than that. I still want an ancient boat but I need to lighten the mood a little. If I saw one of these hulks today while out for a walk (unlikely as I live in the highlands) I'd be very interested. I'd peer through the windows and take photos. I wouldn't get too near in case I became dirty.

However, if I had seen one of these hulks 57 years ago when I was ten years old, I'd be aboard it like a shot. I'd be a pirate. I'd be a fisherman, captain of the Titanic (same name evenROTF), trawlerman, explorer. I'd be playing. Was there ever a better playground for a kid? So we take a really old boat like Emma, and age her to the point of destruction and then people her with kids having fun at the very beginnings of their lives. Youth and age together is a good contrast, interesting but the poignancy of the old boat is swamped by the joy of the kids.

Kids are too cute. The children would blur the age and death theme too much. The story would be confused and lost. So, I need to guide the observers into thinking the way I want them to. I need to set then a strong example. I want them to see the scene through old and slightly melancholic eyes, so that they will understand the old/young contrast and what it means at an emotional level.

Close your eyes and imagine this...

There's a boat, an old fashioned one, lying abandoned on a shore somewhere, it's damaged. There's graffiti, some fire damage. You can see her ribs through spaces where planks have been torn off for camp fires. The whole thing is rotten with blistered paint, rust streaks. There's litter. A gang of half a dozen kids are playing on it. One's fishing off the side with his line in a bucket. Another one is trying to climb the bowsprit, the mast being long gone over the side. Another is reading Treasure Island.

As we look around, suddenly we notice in the shade, unnoticed on the shore is an old, old man. He's wearing a Captain's hat and an old pea-jacket. He looks at the scene and we see it all through his eyes. Is it his old boat? Is he reliving his sailing days? Or his childhood days hanging around the harbour? What does he feel when he sees his old boat that served him so well at sea, just a broken down wreck to amuse the children? There aren't an answers of course, it's up to the observer to make his own. Is that enough to make it art?

I like that scenario but I have another layer in mind. Let's call it Plan B. The problem is that I don't know whether it makes it better or worse. In Plan B, the old salty sea dog is in a wheelchair and accompanied by two adults. They are his children and the parents of the kids playing on the boat. The sailor stares at the boat and the children. The woman stands beside his wheelchair and the man is consulting his wristwatch in that universal symbol of 'I'm bored, let's go back to the hotel.' Now you have five people all interacting with each other. There's sailor grandfather, daughter, son-in-law, children and Emma the boat and I think that adds up to fifteen two way relationships. The thing is, it's not a short story anymore. It's turned into a novel and I'm not sure that one scene can carry that much meaning. Plan A is simpler.

I guess each of us will prefer either Plan A or B for reasons of our own. I'll make the decision eventually but I'd be very interested to hear your preferences.
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Put one kid aboard with a homemade pirate hat, eyepatch and wooden sword. ;)
 
Cap'n Smithy:
Wow! You're really working this up like a film production! A couple of thoughts... While boats are sometimes wrecked in storms, the vast majority of those found ashore were abandoned by their owners because they were no longer economically viable. Smaller boats are towed up a creek by their owners. Larger craft are abandoned in a "graveyard of ships." It's the cheapest way to get rid of a boat that can now longer be used make a buck. I had the privilege of viewing the Hesper and the Luther Little in Wiscasset ME in 1972. Those two schooners were built in 1917 and 1918 for hauling bulk cargo. Steam vessels made them obsolete for this role in the 1920's. They ended up abandoned at a dock in Wiscasset. The pic below shows the two vessels as they looked in 1979. They are now gone.

I remember from my visit to Wiscasset that there was a seafood shack close by to provide for visitors who came to view the schooners. You may consider including one in your diorama. The 2 pics below show typical New England seafood shacks. I have eaten at the Seaview on visits to Mystic CT. Maybe the ol' skipper is now serving fried clam bellies to rusticators in your script. Fair winds!


Hesper_and_Luther-Little.jpegseafood shack 1.jpegseafood shack 2.jpeg
 
Namabiiru said:
I like where your going with this. My $0.02, but I'd go with either kids playing or the old man standing and looking, but not both. Maybe it's just the KISS principle, but I think the simpler the arrangement the stronger the emotion conveyed by it.
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I like the idea of simplicity. It might make the scene easier to read and at the same time open to different interpretations if there were fewer characters. How about thr old man and only one child. the elder is looking at the bows, maybe reaching out an arm to touch the boat and the youngster is at the tiller. They are both wearing captain's caps but they can't see each other and there's no indication that they are aware of each other. Are they the same person?

Namabiiru said:
It's time to stop typing when I start to wax poetic...
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That's when I begin.ROTF
 
Gravman said:
I am thinking plan A. Being 70 puts things in perspective and I always enjoy watching the neighborhood rapscallions doing their best to improve the street. I know if I had seen an old boat just waiting to be climbed on when I was a kid I would have been on it like white on rice. In my youth the monkey bars were high enough to break a leg if you fell.
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"White on rice" That's an interesting phrase. I understand the meaning but I'm curious what the white thing is.

I want at least one child to emphasise the age of the old boat and there are some very nice figures in this set. The historical period looks like the fifties and sixties which is when you and I were kids. :)

boys figures.jpg

I have now ordered a set of these figures. :D
 
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Captain B said:
I’m leaning towards plan B. As the elderly sailor walks with a child and comes across the wreck. He describes the wreck to the child by all the amazing things it was capable of doing during its prime. But the child’s interest is attracted by a small flashy pleasure craft passing in the distance.
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I had a similar idea but it was to be the children's father who wasn't interested in Grandad's history while the children would be enjoying the boat.

However, when I considered the idea of the old salt's love of the sea being rejected I thought it made the story a bit of a moan; "The youth of today... etc etc"
 
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