HOW TO BUILD AIRCRAFT DIORAMAS

[JohnReid]

I am presently posting a few old signs advertising gas,coke,spark plugs etc...as well as the usual no smoking and no trespassing signs.Most of these I got off the internet(tinsigns.com)Mine of course are from the 1920-30s era.It is important that you do a little research here to confirm the era of your signage.It can be earlier than the era you are trying to depict,but,of course never later.The older the signage,the longer it has been hanging there,the more weathering required.
I usually weather my signs with pastels and acrylics.With a wood surface there is no danger of the pastels rubbing off,so I use them to shade around the sign where crud and dirt may gather(it also makes the sign stand out from its surroundings)Then I take an old toothbrush and dip it in very watery raw umber acrylic and with my thumb I flick on a spray of crud.Nails can be weathered using dots of burnt umber gesso followed by a burnt sienna overcoat,and then a little burnt sienna pastel to soften the appearence.Drips an stains can be simulated with very watery burnt sienna.

I prepare the signs by spraying them with laquer(do not brush as it smears)Then I glue them with white glue to cardboard or thin plywood and trim as required.
When placing signs remember to use your imagination.They dont always have to be in the center of the wall or exactly level,depending on the situation you are trying to represent.A real old sign could even be hanging off one nail or hardly be readable or have graffity on it,torn on the edges,bullet holes in it ... etc.etc.When walking or driving around make a mental note of what you see in real life.In fact,that is a good habit to get into anyway,one of the things that seperates a good artist from an average one,is his attention to detail.Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

For you guys who do other than WW1 subjects check out this new ,aircraft only, diorama forum over on http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com for lots of great diorama information.Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

Further to the above posting.Especially check out Fred"s wonderful dioramas and great picture taking skills.Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

Well today is an exciting day for me and one that I have been looking forward to for a long time.It is the day that I can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel.
Up until now I have been building individual components for the finished diorama.But today I will be completely breaking everything down and totally finishing each part and installing it permanently.This is where the fun really begins ,watching your ideas finally coming together.Its like you have reached the top and are coasting down the other side.It is also a time were I seriously start researching "whats next".It is a time when I feel pulled in two directions.One the excitement of finishing up and the other the excitment of beginning something new.
For the next project the most creative time is right now.The time that we artists live for.Creating that mental image in your mind.Knowing that it is something that has never existed before and would never have existed without your creative input.It is very personal in nature and I believe a spiritual experience.
So far on the top of my list of "whats next" projects sits a Wright Flyer in a museum setting.It will be suspended from the ceiling of the museum with a model of one of the Wrights at the controls.A little boy and his grandfather will be standing on the museum floor,hand in hand,looking up in wonderment .
The model itself will be of the Wright Flyer 2 which is seldom modeled.Essentially it is the same airplane with a few dimentional changes to make it more stable.What the Wrights called their first really controllable configuration.Also on the museum floor there will be museum artifacts.Maybe a wind tunnel,maybe a bicycle(with their rudamentary 1st wind tunnel idea),glass cabinets containing artifacts.I reall y dont know yet.
Well ,thats the plan so far .As always there will be numerous changes as I go along but thats also part of the fun because even I dont know how it will really look when finished. Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

I have decided that this will be the title of my new Wright diorama. Why?
because it is one of the basic principals of flight,because it tells of their overcoming every adversity they encountered to realize their dream,and because I just like the tune,
"Oh so many roads
What to leave in and what to leave out.
I'm older now but still runnin against the wind."

Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

Just to give you an idea of the scope of this project I figure that just in the hangar floor there are 3,600 nails that are represented by the following methodology.
-measure and decide the pattern that you will use (how far are the floor joists apart)Two nails side by side or staggered like the siding?
-Mark position of nail holes and with a hammer and a pin open a hole in the floor to represent where the nail should be.(on softer wood you may have to use a drill)
-Take a ordinary HB grafite pencil and twist it into the hole to represent the grayish-black nailhead.
-Take a very small round brush and fill each hole with watery raw umber(you may have to do this more than once to completely swell the hole shut.
-touch up as required(some nails may be more noticable than others or near the doors they may require a bit of rust using watery burnt siennna.)
And of course this has been done over a already weathered floor using acrylics and pastels.
If I spend on average just 30 seconds on each hole ,your looking at 30 hours work just to nail the hangar floor! Ahh,but it is fun to do outside on these nice sunny days with a bottle of my favorite brew to keep me company and some good old rock and roll on the boom box(love those Harley-Davidson road songs and Bob Seger)and besides it looks so damn good when its finished.
Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

you know I am really torn between the idea of the museum and something simpler.
The whole storyline of the Wright Flyer will be the sense of wonderment that the boy and his grandfather share when looking up at the airplane.Do I really need all the extras(besides I am getting fed up building buildings and not airplanes)The museum idea would be just another complicated build. Maybe this time I should go with the KISS principal and the windtunnel idea that I talked about earlier.I am a woodcarver, so I was thinking maybe I should carve a windtunnel out of walnut or whatever and place the airplane and figures in there.(obviously the windtunnel would not be running)Maybe the grandfather is a aeroengineer bringing his grandson to show him where he works.The ideas are really two extremes of complication but the simpler one would still tell the story and in the end maybe more powerful for the viewer if not too many other things are going on.Artistically it is also nice to have the contrast between the simplicity of the windtunnel in natural wood and the realism of the complicated airplane.Hmmmm....Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

I have tried through the NASA website http://www.lerc.nasa.gov to get some info on the Ames 80x120 windtunnel ,especially pics with the Wright Flyer sitting inside.I know that they test flew the design there as I have a pic from the book "On Great White Wings " of it sitting on the sting.It even has a model of one of the Wrights at the controls.While the pic is good I still could use more info.
C heers! John.

[JohnReid]

Take a look at the cardmodeling site that Eric made mention of in his posting.And they do dioramas too...Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

Well,guess what! The hangar floor is finally finished.From here on in ,on the nice days I will be finishing off the interior walls outside, and on the rainy days I will work in the shop on the windows and doors.
Now that the floor is fininished, I can begin to finalize what goes where.I have a rough idea at this point but there probably will have to be a few adjustments to make everything fit.For example ,I just dont think that there is room for the second horiz stab/elevator assembly to be attached to the airplane so it will have to go up against the hangar wall or maybe even stored up in the roof rafters.
The proper placement of things in a diorama is an art in itself and one I spend a lot of time on.Many thing have to be considered.what story are you trying to tell? are there any sub-stories? where do you want to focus your viewers attention? overall composition? colors? atmosphere(lighting etc..) on and on.
But this is truly the fun time of diorama making,seeing it all starting to come together.I can feel the excitement of seeing the finished product.Its been a long time on just one diorama.I think from here on in, I will concentrate on a blend of stylized and realistic forms in my dioramas.The settings will not be quite so elaborate and I will concentrate more on the storylines.Sometimes it can be even more powerful to say what you have to say in a minimalist way.(or maybe I am just tired of building buildings) Cheers! John.