HOW TO BUILD AIRCRAFT DIORAMAS

[JohnReid]

For the airplane guys,please try to suffer through the talk about cars but a lot of this applies to aircraft dioramas too!

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

[JohnReid]

Billy B finally got his head!

[JohnReid]

[JohnReid]

My fellow dioramist and friend Ken Hamilton has OKd me to use these pics of his wonderful Bomber diorama.
This is one of the most imaginative aircraft dioramas that I have ever seen.It has all the elements of what a great diorama should be.
He has promised to send me better pics in the future so I will wait until then to get further into the elements of this diorama and what makes it outstanding in my opinion.
Cheers! John.
Ken's book "How to Build Creative Dioramas" is now out of print but is available from the author.Highly Recommended.

[JohnReid]

[JohnReid]

[JohnReid]

[JohnReid]

This is Eddie R with his head on! I will finish his facial features and all the others as well,after they are placed in the hangar with the overhead lights on.
Billy B and Eddie R are the central characters in the "Memories of Flight School" storyline.Their smiling faces ,in memory of their early training experiences in the Jenny aircraft ,is central to the dioramas theme.They will be joined by two other American pilots in a small grouping that will be front and center in the diorama.
In finally glueing on the heads, I have established how this grouping will relate to one another.
Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

[JohnReid]

Meet Ace,the Canadian barnstorrmer .He got his handle during the first world war.Ace will be in a seperate grouping of three figures ,along with Al Capp the airport manager and Duke the RFC type.
Ace is part or a group of barnstromers known as "The Flying Aces" based out of the "Reid and Sons "hangar at this local southern Ontario field.
He is painted is various shades of black which does not show very well on the scanner.His redfox collar was retained but I toned it down a little.I added his hand holding a pair of gloves,dry brushed his boots and glossed his goggles using Gloss Medium.