I've been reading some stuff written by scratchbuilders recently. You already know how that goes when refering to people who build boxed kits. The one big deal about kit building is ignored in every single article I have read recently. I feel that model kits never have been about building first & formost; it's about painting. That's the first reason I became interested in models. Those who build from boxed kits want to paint, weather, detail and so on. That's an art that obviously can reach the same intensity that other fine arts have. The separation of parts in the form of an unassembled model is so the
model painter can have unlimited access to the parts.
I don't think its wise for a scratchbuilder to come down on kits or those who build them. We've all got to keep our chops up in painting. Kits are always there for us to have something to paint without having to scratchbuild the subject first. If all we could ever do was scratchbuild, hardly none of us would ever get around to painting anything. I bet almost all of the advanced paint and detailing that scratchbuilders do was developed and perfected by the world of kit assemblers. It doesn't matter how deep into scratchbuilding I get... I don't think I'll ever stop kits because I'm too crazy about the paint.