Desaturation…
The childhood railway experiences of mine were two contrasts. The full fat bright colours of British Rail sectorisation on hand at Chester station with the desaturated black-and-white imagery found in books at the library…
I have found myself expanding my model collection with less attention, perhaps intention to specific modelling projects. This ‘scope creep’ goes beyond existing layouts to dreams of new ones, attracted by images in books, videos on YouTube or snatches of long forgotten memories. A refocus brings what is important more clearly into sharp relief. This morning I put out a few of my Scottish models, enjoying their small form, the work of Chinese toolmakers and my hand in artful weathering.
These feel welcome, calming, I feel at home amongst them.
Lochdubh continues to delight, and whilst dreams of a larger exhibition style project based upon my imaginary brunch line linger I continue to feel very much in love with this incredibly small slice of the Scottish Highlands.
I opened with a reflection on ‘de-saturation’ in terms of experience of the prototype. I continued with the idea that through refocusing our modelling we can feel a lifting of the weight.
The weight of expectation that all these items will one day require a layout!
De-saturation if you like, space to breathe…
Until next time, more soon…
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I know it's a typo, but I do like the idea of a 'brunch' line, a place to visit midday with a flask of tea and some form of snackage to go for a ride or just watch trains rumble by.
ReplyDeleteLet’s leave it then - I too love the idea of a brunch line too…
DeleteIt wasn't just being in black and white. It was that really hard to recreate low contrast softness, that was often misleading when compared to reality - but "real" in another sense. Some layouts seem to align with that ethos. Borchester, for instance. But we seem to have become obsessed with a different approach that is almost hyper realistic.I'm looking at a line up of some of my OO9 stock. The Bachmann Penrhyn loco and the Kato Princess are superb models, but sandwiched between them is my crude 3D printed, overscale Simplex. Somehow that seems more real.
ReplyDeleteThat contrast in models is a work of art sandwiched between toys. Those toys can become art if handled, detailed, personalised and weathered - but out of the box they are cold and dead. I guess that’s something that keeps me in business, people want to breathe life into these expensive ‘hyper detailed’ models but are afraid of ruining them so they turn to a professional. I consider myself an artist these days, so I can see the art in both approaches.
DeleteI think you have touched on something important here. Oddly even a very realistic model can seem "toy like" in some sense. In robotics and AI terms we are in the realm of the uncanny valley. Counterintuitively somethings become less realistic because they are so nearly realistic.
DeleteI suppose we are all familiar with the finescale layout that lacks life. The first example I came across was Barry Norman's Bishops Castle. It was an incredible model, but dead.