- Member since
February 2004
- From: Montreal/Canada
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Posted by JohnReid
on Monday, July 3, 2006 9:23 AM
Hi Guys! Today
I would like to talk a bit about the order vs chaos phenomenon.It seems
to me that car modellers who make dioramas are a very neat and clean
group indeed.I dont know if this is because they come from a background
of wanting to have their cars showroom perfect or what.While the car as
an object of display in a showroom can be in pristine condition most of
its surrounding will not.It seems that there is something built into
humans that is natural to want to have everything clean and orderly.We
want to place everything just so ,as though it was constantly on
display.Too much order can be an enemy of the dioramist.The real world
is not like this(only man plants trees in rows).If your diorama is too
static, it will look staged.The goal of a good diorama is to bring a
slice of life alive as though it were one frame of a movie.The fun of
diorama making is that we are the authors of this miniature world.We
are storytellers,set directors,lighting
managers,producers,directors,carpenters and stage hands in our own one
frame movie.This is an awesome but fun task to get it right and it is
not always easy. Just the proper placement of things in a diorama can
take hours of positioning and re-positioning to get it just
right.Always be careful not to get things too static or uniform.Do not
line things up with the same spacing between them.Stay away from rows
and things that are exactly 90deg. etc.. etc...
Lets take a look
at the idea of adding a simple bookcase in a room in a diorama.Now
normally a person when placing this bookcase would line it up straight
with the wall or maybe of only off a couple of unnoticible degrees.That
is what we would do when we think about it.But would we place it
exactly in the center of the wall.Maybe yes but most of the time
no.Would all the shelves be neatly lined with books(except in a lawyers
office)as though they were never used.I dont think so ,not in real
life.Would it be painted a stark white with all the shelves even spaced
devoid of decoration ,well maybe so but this is not what we want as
artists unless we are consciously try ing to do so.Static ,squarely
placed,blandly painted, uninteresting spaces is not where we want to be
as dioramic artists(I hope that is a word, dioramic?)
Now let your
imagination run wild,like when you were a kid.Think fun ,color,a little
chous here and there.Put a little raw umber in that white and warm it
up.Dont worry about the odd book being out of place.Maybe we could
carve a pattern in the wood or decorate it with veneer or maybe just
leave that wonderful patina and design in the wood that is already
there.Maybe we could place the shelves so that they are not so evenly
spaced or maybe jig saw a little off the top.But you say I want to use
this bookcase to display my diecast car collection.No problem you can
line up these little jewels perfectly in even spaced rows because here
it is expected because someone has consciously thought about this as a
static display .
I hope that my little bookcase idea has helped to
explain my ideas. I remember when I used to teach decorative bird
carving we would have to draw feathers on the bird before we carved
them out.I used to tell my students to go ahead and draw them on and
invariably they would draw them in neat little static rows.Then I would
say now go back and screw them all up and that is the way it would be
in nature. Hope this helps! Cheers! John. This pos
Guide my hand in your work today.JWRR. My goal in life is to be as good a person as my dog already thinks I am.
My Photoshop:
http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y250/JohnReid/
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