The cleaner the presentation of our layout, the more buy-in we get from family members….and ourselves. Shown above is a “current status” photo of the East Rail layout showing its floating bench work. There’s nothing that complicated going on. The bench work itself is sixteen inches wide and comprised of hollow core door slabs (The […]
Category: Construction
Color Transitions
The smoother we can make the transitions from one color to the next, the less defined the boundary lines, the better subjects such as scenery and structure weathering will look. One of the most important steps in improving a specific modeling skill, and it’s a hard one, is recognizing the subject is something that deserves […]
Moving Beyond Being an “8 out of 10” Modeler
Victoria Embankment, London. G.De Nittis. Last weekend I attended a lecture at the Phillips on the work of Italian impressionist Giuseppe De Nittis (more well known in Europe than the US). On the panel were two art historians and two museum curators, all excellent speakers. They’d put up a slide of a piece of work […]
Directing the Eye
No matter how much of a prototype modeler we’d like to say we are, the reality of our limited space is such that everything we do is ultimately somewhere on the “proto-freelance” spectrum. Since we can’t copy actual scenes exactly, decisions need to be made with respect to composition. One of the key principles of […]
Grab N Go Staging
This weekend’s project was adding another shelf for my open top staging. These are floating shelves with a 1 1/2″ trim strip on top to keep the cars from rolling off. Steve Jobs big thing was his obsession with ergonomics and the user experience. A lot of this is subtle. I find that if I […]