This is merely one of those strange duplicate posts. Pay it no heed.
ps. I tightened up the shirt tails and hands in pockets.
ps. I tightened up the shirt tails and hands in pockets.
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FANTASTIC. No competition, YOU win!
I have been watching the TV series Air Warriors and other than the one on the UH60 Blackhawk my favorite episodes were about the planes that defended God and country in the Battle of Britain including the Hawker Hurricane and Spitfire.Allan
let me guess...is it a Kumongo?My Xmas present does have a little rigging but only six strings.
I wrote that yesterday, in a thinking aloud, relaxed, chatty state of mind. Twenty-four hours later, I find it to be absolutely true for me.
From the age of about eight until I needed to be cooler to attract girls at fourteen, I made maybe a hundred models. Between 18 and 27 I built half a dozen to pass the time in barracks. After I got married I began to take it a little more seriously, to the horror of my wife who didn’t realise that I had an inner nerd. (We didn’t know each other very well, I initially believed she had human emotions. Ha!)
After the divorce there was a long period when I was too busy with gaining a part-time degree, raising children and a full-time job to need a hobby, but in 1998 a work colleague gave me a model Hawker Hurricane as a secret Santa present. That was 26 years ago and since then, I don’t think I’ve ever stopped modelling.
At first I built them on my own, then I joined a local club, and then the Internet arrived with forums like this. I enjoyed the writing as well as the modelling and the hobby became all consuming. I can’t tell you how many models I’ve made since that Hurricane. I don’t actually know because they all blur together. It doesn’t take long to make a plastic kit of an aeroplane, or a tank, or a ship so the total must be in the high hundreds.
They blur together in my memory because essentially it’s been the same thing over and over again. I open the box and there’s chaos inside. I solve some minor problems on my own, read some books, copy what everyone else is doing and eventually organise it into a model of an aeroplane or a tank or a ship. It lives on the shelf for awhile becomes dusty gets broken and is thrown away. Then I do it again.
I’ve made a few wooden ship models now and they do take much longer. They seem to be more appreciated by the casual viewer too. But even so, plastic or wood, it’s the same old thing - a combination of a three dimensional jigsaw and painting by numbers resulting in a smaller copy of the real thing, whatever it was. So many copies, so little that’s really my own creation.
I’ve modified kits, even built a few from scratch. Ive always tried to make my models slightly different from the other thousands out there. I’ve built dioramas and tried to tell stories in plastic, but despite all that, I no longer see it as a creative way to spend my time. It’s boring me!
I’m only making the model to have something to write about and I think my writing is becoming boring too, and not just to me but to you all as well.
Modelling has been a brilliant pastime for me. It’s a craft and a hobby that I have enjoyed very much over the years. But is it art? Is it art? No, of course it’s not.
That’s a way to make a model of a boat that qualifies as art and it’s so far beyond what I do with a model kit that it’s not even in the same solar system.
Nope. I’m going to finish Alert (because I want to finish modelling on a high) and then walk away from this hobby. The thousand hours a year I’ve been spending on it can be spent in much more fulfilling ways making music and writing stories. What might I have achieved in 26000 hours of practicing guitar or writing for publication? And what did I get out of all that modelling, all that writing?
The polite and well-meant, though largely insincere, approval of strangers.
But then, what do I know?
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That’s a string on bulkhead guitar! Hahaha!
FANTASTIC. No competition, YOU win!
Allan
That photo of me was 1974, not 1934. I’m not that bloody old. Hahaha!
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Tight lines! (As the anglers say)
Ratlines are simple enough at this scale. I did a couple just to try my new method out. Tomorrow I’ll use some squared paper to make sure that everything stays level.
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I find your log both entertaining and informative. Although I don't give you a thumb's up ever time I read your installments, I've learned a lot following your log. Nevertheless, if you are no longer receiving pleasure from building and / or writing, then perhaps it may be time to take a breather and re-evaluate.
Furthermore, you received quite a number of suggestions for your proposed diorama build and I believe there are a number of folks that have "pulled up a chair" to watch the build come to fruition. Me included.
Sending you Christmas greetings from across the pond. Put an extra treat in Buddy's stocking for me.
...henry
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to you perhaps but that may be because you have become so talented at doing so that you now feel close to the top of your game and any improvements are more difficult to reach and no longer providing that sense of accomplishment.
To that I would disagree. Your point of view, I think, is too narrow and biased. A quick Google or other search engine online search will find many definitions and descriptions of what "art" is. To paraphrase several such results which of course fit my biased view:
Your rigging is very good and really looks the part. The Devil is in the details and you are managing those details rather well. I have learned much about the age of sail and the intricacies of these vessels following your build log and those of others here on Ships of Scale.
Seasons Best Wishes to one and all.
cheers, Graham ( in cold and snowy Eastern Ontario )
How do you like these Christmas shrouds and backstays?
Merry Christmas to all my readers.
Merry Christmas to you and your gang as well! Enjoy the season!
Merry Christmas Smithy.View attachment 491405
How do you like these Christmas shrouds and backstays?
View attachment 491404
Merry Christmas to all my readers.
Merry Christmas Smithy
Bill
Bill
I should say that neither of the exuberantly festive houses in the photos are mine. I live in a flat with no personal garden but enjoy other people’s lights when they are done with such panache.