Is this an ART?

Saying this is just a hobby to young minds will teach them just that "A HOBBY". Teaching them that this is an ART opens the door of how can they build better models. Before any students of mine starts a model we look at it and say "HOW CAN WE MAKE THIS A WORK OF ART". True art my friends is ONE OF A KIND.Each of my students is true to the fact this is her or his ART.
Josh spent over 100 hours on the Headless Horseman. When I showed a friend he ask where are all the seams? If I had told josh it's just a hobby he would have built the model with that mind set. His mind set was that of ART. Now we have a model will stand the test of time as true ART from a 16 year old. You can find pics of this model on my website. Look under student models.

We can build it box stock or agonize over a multitude of detail. We may use references books, pictures, etc, but the interpretation of what we see and how we do it is most certainly art.
I was recently in an art supply store to buy some brushes. I asked where the red sable were. One of the personnel asked me what I needed it for and I was told very curtly that the "hobby" brushes were in another section and that I didnt want to waste my money on "artists" brushes. I tried to explain what I was going to do and was again told that these brushes for serious "artists". I left that store and wont purchase there again.
Tommy

Tommy,
As an artist I have always wanted to learn new and better ways of doing my ART.In my mind Art is life! I also think that we must teach others what and how we do things in our ART. I would talk with the top brass of the store and let him know that this sales person didn't want to help you in the way you asked for. Show them what and how you do your model ART. It's your money, your time and your ART. Enjoy my friend!

allan & co.

I'm not trying to be argumentative or antagonize anyone or prove anything, I'm honestly asking for input with the following.

I mentioned that in most, not all, cases I see models as a craft not an art. I agree, even 2 kits with the same color schemes, decals, and attention to detail built by the same person are going to have differences. Every completed model is unique, but does that factor make it "art?"

I compared building kits to carpentry. If 2 people use the same plans for a DIY shelf for a home entertainment system ( I'm talking about something where you have to measure and cut the boards yourself, not the prefab WalMart types ), the two completed projects will also have differences. Does that make those two sets of shelves "art?"

I can't speak for anyone else, but despite the amount of work I put into my kits, I've never seen myself as putting any more artistry in the process than I would in the carpentry project I used in the above example. I may give the kits certain personal touches and such, but I'm assembling and painting something that essentially comes as a prefabricated project. Maybe if I included the model in a diorama it would be art, but I just can't bring myself to call my Defiant or Enterprise E sitting on the shelf "art." Does that mean I'm not proud of them? Of course not! I'm proud of them as any craftsman would be of a "job well done." I just don't see myself as using the same types of talents as Picasso or Gieger.

If I scratchbuilt something, maybe I'd have a different attitude about the results.

There are always exceptions, of course. It may have been straight from the box, but I could see someone calling that red F-22 with "YIPPEE" across the wings ( FSM's gallery a few years back ) as art!


I couldn't even find my way back to "normal" with the Hubble!

I just build for the personal satisfaction it gives .

I really couldn't care less what people call it.

You got a point, merlin.

I'm off now to burn that soapbox I keep tripping over.

QUOTE: Originally posted by claymore68 Look at the Iwo Jima memorial, It is a bronze sculpture (art) of a photograph (art) of the real event. A photo of the mem. is art, a small ceramic sculpture of the original is art, so, therefore, a model must be art as it is a sculpture. Sure the method of fabrication is different but the end result is the same, a peice of art commerating a real incident.

A couple of years ago, I drew a pic of the Iwo Jima memorial, and I pretty strongly consider it to be art.

http://members.cox.net/maddafinga/iwojima.jpg

I spend just about as much time on a model as I do on a drawing, and I consider them both to be art. I just happen to be better at drawing right now (though my modeling is improving, it's still not real great/).

The pic didn't come out great on the webpage, but I've never done that before, so you'll have to forgive me. The actual pic, and even the scan of it on my puter are much more detailed.

In case anyone wants to see some more of my artwork, here's the link: http://members.cox.net/maddafinga/artwork_of_josh_allen.htm

I'll put some model artwork on there eventually, soon as I get some good enough to share. Model building absolutely is an art.

madda

I haven't read too many of the replies here, so if this is redundant, my apologies.

This hobby is whatever you want it to be. We're all in it for our own reasons, many of us for similar reasons and some for radically different reasons.

Some choose to make it an obsession, some a passion and some just wanna build models for the sake of building models. I fall under the category of making it a passion. I'm an artist by nature and that translates to my model building.

I used to be amongst the ranks of what many know as rivet counters, the obsessive types. No more. I simply enjoy creating a visually striking piece of 3 dimensional art; if it's exactly accurate to the scale inch or not... I could care less. I still am finicky, but I've mellowed considerably.

Model building in it's most basic form is just a hobby, a pastime... nothing else. In it's most advanced form, it is, indeed, art.


Fade to Black...

Hey maddafinga,
That is some nice drawing.I hope you keep the passion for models and drawing alive. I would like to see some of your models.
My drawing is just what I do in class with my Visual art students. I have taken all the passion for drawing and painting and put it in my models.
A few weeks back I was working on my restored Aurora Phantom model. The face was not working. So the artist in me added some color pencils to get the look I wanted. If not for the artist in me I would have been stuck. I might have tossed the model in the trash or just quit.
Keep your art alive!!!!
Dales Model Art
http://community.webshots.com/user/dales_model_art

QUOTE: Originally posted by berny13 If someone slaps a few scraps of metal together and puts it in an art gallery, people call it art. So actually it is in the eye of the builder or viewer. If you create something out of small plastic parts, into a scale replica of the real thing, then IMO you have created art. There are too many people that look down on our hobby as building child like toys. A model shop just opened in our area. It would be the only model shop within 120 miles. The day it opened I went in to look around. The only thing there was RC aircraft, boats and RC components. I asked if they had any plastic models. He told me they were a serious model shop dedicated to the true model builder and if I wanted something plastic to go to a toy store. He added that they don't carry toys or useless non modeling equipment.

Oh I've had that happen to me more than once! Kinda put me off RC. Snobs, thats what they are..

I had this discussion with my girlfriend a while back. She's from a very artistic background. Her mother and sister are both artists and do reasonably well selling their paintings. She thought it defininatly was art. Especially at the level that most of us are, when using more than just the paint numbers in the box. The craft ends where the kit ends. The art starts when the first wash goes on. Or when the turned aluminium barrel gets attached to the turret.. One day get two identical kits and resist the urge to do any weathering, detailing or scratchbuilding whatsover on one, and go nuts on the other. I bet you the former is the craft version and the latter the art version.

They say that arts art when the piece has a meaning. The above stated sculpture of a rotting apple by Yoko Ono might not be considered as art by some, neither may a collection of tack-welded junk yard scrap. But the artist wanted to express a feeling or convey a message. If I wander through my old textbooks from highschool, I see little cartoons of something that happenend just at that moment. Its only really funny to me, but its an example of art because it conveys a message, no matter how small and insignificant. Now we modellers are balancing on a fine line. Or not, actually. The line between art and craft is a very hazy one. When we build a kit and don't take it any further than the instructions, then we're craftsmen. When we take it beyond the instructions, adding depth, enriching it with history, reenacting a historic (actual or hypothetical) scene, then we're no different than someone painting a still life of a bowl of fruit. But don't forget, there are also differences between painters and artists. That one beats the heck out of me, because someone who paints a picture doesn't necesarily have to be an artist and an artist doesn't necesarily have to paint pretty pictures.. At the end of the day this lies in the eye of the beholder. As we behold our own and eachothers creations with great admiration and awe then let us regard eachothers as artists and let anyone else who tells us otherwise take a running jump!

There!

When is a sheep chopped in half art?

When its the work of Damian Hurst.

Yet when your local butcher does it, he's just being a butcher.

Go figure.

Models in themselves are not art, they are a resonse to a creative desire. It is that creative desire, and the refusal to accept formal boundaries that leeds to art, whatever it's form

Karl

In my forty years as an artist I have seen some very poor art, that has been given much praise.
Some of this so called poor art makes me sick, and I know for a fact that the artist or so called artist is only trying to get his or her name out into the media.
For many of the so called artist and the work the produce it's only a game of look at me; that 15 min of fame.
If you want to call model building a hobby or art its your money and your time.
For me it's an extension of my forty years of being an artist. It's now a very big part of my life. I have what I wanted to do for so many years,it's learning and understanding all aspects of model building.
I can honesty say that many times that forty years as an artist help me to solve a huge model building problem.
It's all in ones attitudes of ones own work, art or hobby.

Dales Model Art
http://community.webshots.com/user/dales_model_art

Is model building an art? What is truth? What is beauty?

Hey look, if an image of Jesus in a jar of urine[:0] or the perversities of Maplethorpe can be called art by the "cultural elite" then perhaps I would rather they not call my work art. I don't want the praise of someone who admires that garbage. But when the "experts" start giving true art the recognition it deserves, I have no doubt that they would include our kind of work in the definition of fine art. After all, doesn't art imitate life? Don't our models imitate their prototypes?

Art is in the eye of the beholder. -so I've been told. If you look at something and it inspires you or creates some form of emotion, good or bad it is technically considered art. To the untrained eye our stuff may look like toys but for a select few it is truly considered to be an art form.

Place a well built 1/48 scale F-4 in front of a Vietnam Vet and tell me that it dosen't create an emotion.

-fish

Just thought I'd pass this on: Webster's New World Dictionary, 3rd College Edition (1988), defines art as:
1. Human ability to make things; creativity of man as distinguished from the world of nature
2. skill; craftmanship
And I especially like Number 6:
6. Any branch of creative work, especially painting, drawing, or work in any other graphic or plastic medium
Is model building an art form? You bet it is, and regardless of whether or not it evokes some sort of emotional response--at least sort of. I build simply to satisfy a creative urge to replicate something that I enjoy looking at. I guess some may consider it strange, but I don't build a Mustang, Marder or Missouri because of its historical significance, necessarily, but because I like the lines, the angles and the overall design, as well as the authority and power conveyed within those lines. I can't draw or paint on a canvas (About the only things I do draw are gnats, flies and mosquitoes.); I can't sculpt clay or marble, but I can take the media of metal, resin, and styrene and with a little work make something that evokes the emotions of contentment and satisfaction. Once again, Webster is correct.
Gip Winecoff