by mike | Jun 7, 2021 | OST Believes, The Art of The Craft, The Modeling Conversation |
The creative process of making art that I understand is often messy and non-linear. It involves following your gut instead of the opinions of others and knowing what you want to say with a piece. There are moments of certainty mixed with long periods of staring at an...
by mike | Jun 3, 2021 | Detailing Track, The Art of The Craft, The P48 Experience |
Consider if you will the lowly spur track. Once proud, well maintained and full of activity; now, it’s merely a remnant. Neglected and forgotten it’s the final refuge for rail and ties no longer suited to mainline service. Without an active customer, it’s a liability,...
by mike | May 17, 2021 | The Art of The Craft |
Staging has become such a given of layout design that often times the volume of staging track exceeds the amount of visible track on a layout. With a cameo design like Mill Road, where operations focus only on a handful of car movements, I don’t need a ton of staging...
by mike | Apr 19, 2021 | The Art of The Craft |
Do we need a backdrop? We all know the problems of creating a realistic backdrop. The explosion of photomurals helps but they aren’t a cure-all. It takes skill to turn a flat vertical plane into the illusion of volumetric space that conveys the depth we see outside....
by mike | Mar 24, 2021 | Storytelling, The Art of The Craft |
Like art itself, model railroading comes in many forms and the choices involved can be overwhelming. How do you know what direction to go in? In this post I want to explore ways of discovering your own visual design language. Overarching ThemesMany of us had early...
by mike | Mar 9, 2021 | Modeling Techniques, The Art of The Craft |
Design is a language; often a visual language that influences our thinking daily whether we realize it or not. Once you understand the basics of this language, you’ll begin to see the world differently. Both art and modeling draw heavily from similar design principles...
