[JohnReid]

I have been thinking for some time about whether I should bore you guys with a little personal experience I have had with creativity.As you probably already know from reading this thread , I have been involved in many different creative things over the years.I must say that I have enjoyed them all but there was always something missing.I didnt feel completely comfortable doing what I was doing even though I was relatively successful.In bird carving I felt frustrated by my lack of knowledle about the subject, namely birds.In wood carving figures,good but not comfortable.Same with relief carving or bird painting,something was missing.Then I got to thinking,What did I really enjoy the most? and I thought back to putting those figures on HMS Victory.Figuring out how I would tell the story that I wanted to get across.Then I thought ,what do I know best,of course,Aviation.I had even built a 1:1 scale biplane in the 60s.There it was under my nose all along.So i took my love of airplanes,history and art and my need to tell a story and came up with the diorama idea.Years earlier I had picked up Shep Paines book out of curiousity, read it, and thought maybe someday I would give it a try and promptly forgot about it, except every once an awhile I would pick it up again and leaf through the pages.
When I retired from actively teaching woodcarving I was again searching for something new.Then I thought about my modeling building 50 years earlier and decided to give it a try again, just for fun.Well ,I started where I left off all those years ago building WW2 fighters and bombers.I built up quite a stash of unbuilt kits.I built a few,thought about dioramas and copying Sheps work but still I wasnt satisfied.I felt this overwheming need to do something original(if there is such a thing) to be cont....