Located on the roof above the entrance is, for lack of a better term, a “cupola like” structure with aesthetic arches running across the face.
Aerial photos show the shape is a little more complicated than I first thought. It has a hip roof and the front face isn’t flat but has a portion that juts out a little.
Here’s the completed cupola. The arches were made with my craft cutter.
….and here’s the cupola in place on the overall structure. It makes more of a contribution to the overall appearance than I anticipated.
The Jack Delano photo above is an example of using contrast to emphasize a subject. Note how the white skyscraper stands out from its neighbors. Also notice that the neighboring structures are fairly similar in color. All of the hues are plausible.
A key concept in art theory is that of directing the viewer’s eye, and moving it to a primary subject. There are direct applications to model railroading because we frequently have a favorite structure or scenic feature we want to highlight. There are a number of ways of “emphasizing” a subject. It can be done by controlling its size, location, or contrasting it with neighboring elements. Today let’s take a look at contrast.
Contrast means different from neighboring elements. For now let’s focus on color. Unlike a painting, where we have the entire color palette available, modelers are constrained by the need for our colors to be plausible. If you study any photo of the popular steam-to-diesel transition era you’ll notice that the vast majority of the structures are white (more accurately an ultra pale gray), oxide brick, or gray.
Shown above are some ways we can emphasize a favorite structure and do so in a way that’s believable. The key is to contrast the focal point with its neighbors. Notice that in rows A through D we’ve used commonly found shades. There are four structures three of which are basically the same color. The ‘favorite’ building is a different hue making it jump out. Say for example you had a typical residential street. If three houses are the commonly found white clapboard, and one is brick, the brick one will stand out. You can do the opposite and have three brick and one white one.
Where things fall apart is what you see in row E. Even though the colors of each home are plausible, there is so much variety that you don’t have contrast. There is visual chaos and the eye jumps around and can’t find your “favorite”.
One of the several tricky steps of building Miami Jai-Alai is fabricating the distinctive arches on the sides and front top. No commercial parts are available and it would be impossible to get clean cuts by hand. Time to dust off the craft cutter.
The first step is to draw the arches in CAD. One particularly nice feature of 3rdPlanIt is its ability to import photos. Using Google Streetview I captured an image of the side, cleaned it up, and dumped it into the CAD program. With that done, I basically traced the arches. Since the craft cutter wouldn’t recognize the file type, I exported it in .dxf format, opened it in Adobe Illustrator and re-saved it in Adobe’s .ai format.
Creating the drawing was the hard part. Once that was accomplished I simply fed a sheet of .020″ styrene into the cutter and, voila, in less than a minute it cut a perfectly shaped piece. The cutter can’t really cut through the styrene so you’re essentially making a deep scribe and then using the bend and snap method get the part.
The chlorine tank on the right has a fairly glossy surface. Our natural tendency would be to replicate that sheen on a model of it. Is that the best approach?
As modelers we have a natural tendency to examine the prototype and copy it as closely as possible. Our thinking being that the better job we do at “copying” the better the model will look.
We have to ask ourselves, is this always the best approach? I don’t think so because it doesn’t take everything into account. Specifically, it doesn’t take into account the differences between the real world, which includes long distances and atmosphere, and our model world which involves very short distances and no atmosphere.
A fairly noticeable issue we face is one of gloss vs. flat surfaces It would seem simple, if railroad X keeps their motive power in pristine condition, as is fairly common, we should follow suit and apply the same sheen to our models.
It seems so simple but to my eye this approach just doesn’t work. Glossy rolling stock, no matter how accurate that sheen is, looks toy like to me. For some time I couldn’t figure out why. I’m beginning to think it has to do with viewing distance. No matter how shiny the prototype is, we generally view it from a bit of a distance. With that distance, and looking through atmosphere, there is the illusion of gloss surfaces looking dull.
It’s a matter of taste but personally, I think most model subjects look far better if we dull the surface, even if the prototype is glossy. The same applies to structures and signage. I just can’t get over the nagging feeling that glossy surfaces don’t work when scaled down. To me, dull surfaces look more realistic and, in the case of rolling stock, “heavier”. That opinion and a few bucks will buy your next cup of coffee.
Since my last posting, I’ve managed to complete the exterior sides and roof. The shape is fairly simple but, even so, the relatively large size made ensuring I got everything to the right size and fit a little more time consuming. Also, the larger size required far more effort to make sure that everything was adequately braced.
Here’s a view from the bottom which gives a better sense of the overall composite of materials used.
