I bought a cheap plastic kit for a Suzuki Jimney recently as a way to try and break my lack of enthusiasm for making things. My plan - stick it together with no expectations other than I'd finally have made something.
But then my brain gets in the way. I start looking at the body and thinking I'll need to paint it, and that really means going out to the garage and using the airbrush. While out there, the chassis and black bits would benefit from some paint.
Then I really ought to detail the interior - and so it goes on. I'm feeling tired just thinking about it. So the kit goes back in the box and back on the pile as it's more work than I'm in the mood for right now.
I look at serious plastic modellers work and am normally very impressed, but wonder if some of the fun has been lost. The fun we had as kids of just sticking a model together without fretting about the finer details.
This is a hobby. It's supposed to be fun, but do our expectations get in the way of our enjoyment?
I know that I definitely have suffered from similar afflictions on occasion. There is a loco which it has been nearly 10 years since I started detailing it, but has sat in its box for the vast majority of the time, as each time it has reached a hurdle or 'snag' it has been one which has dampened enthusiasm to finish it.
ReplyDeletePhil, I know where you’re coming from. Take railway wagon kits for instance. Years ago I happily built them as designed and painted them. Job done. Then I started to pay more attention to the modelling press and realised that I could improve my standards if I did things in a certain way and bought additional parts. The results look great, but it now takes me an age to finish anything! So I now look at a kit and see all the extra things I really should do, and it has become a bit of a chore, sadly. Is it the additional effort and thinking that is now required, given that one is going “off piste”, so to speak? (Thankfully, I don’t do this with things like IKEA furniture!)
ReplyDeleteI think ready made stuff's got too good - 40 years ago I hacked the cab off my Lima dmu to make a 121, repainted my Hornby B17 into BR colours with a brush, and to be honest the results were as good as much of what I saw in Railway Modeller every month. Now they'd be laughable and I wouldn't contemplate such things. Sad really!
ReplyDeleteJim - it is sad. I know what you mean too.
ReplyDeleteI might have found an answer, for me at least, in the shape of a Phil Sharples 16mm Simplex kit. It's very forgiving - mysteriously losing 1mm off an axle when cutting them to length hasn't ruined things, I've still managed to get it to the correct gauge. Needs painting now, then cab detailing, but it's actually happening!
DeletePhil,
ReplyDeleteMay I suggest you take a look at Chris Ford's blog post for today and spend 15 minutes watching the video he has linked to.
http://unnycoombelala.blogspot.com/
Geoff
Isn't the answer to just stick it together?
ReplyDeleteTo quote...
'I bought a cheap plastic kit for a Suzuki Jimney recently as a way to try and break my lack of enthusiasm for making things'
It was cheap and you bought it to get your mojo back - you didn't get it to build a superb model. Just put it together! I wouldn't even bother painting it.
Dave.
Sorry to hear that model making is not something that is a strong desire in your life at the moment. Some interesting comments already made here and there are so many different reasons why most of us go through similar feelings at some stage - usually on several occasions.
ReplyDeleteYour final paragraph is interesting and I would!ask has model making become unhealthily competitive? There are not only magazines where ever increasing resolution cameras produce pictures where every tiny misplaced part, paint splat, glue blob is picked up with sharp focus but we also have the internet and all that this brings in showcasing models. It can all be inspirational but it can also easily be disillusioning. I am sure there are some who give up model making and take up a different hobby on the back of thinking that they can never achieve what us shown. At the moment I am going through my 40 year collection of railway modelling magazines which is some task but educational in looking back what modelling was like 20, 30, 40 years ago. Black and white photos reproduced to not a very high resolution. Layout of the month where Matchbox lorries in a variety of non 00 gauge scales where prominent, trees looking like a sponge on a stick and many more such things but the owners were proud and we as readers saw things we could also do and did.
What this brings me to is the inspirational part of your blog and your work for various magazines over the years is that you have shown things that realistically most modellers can make and indeed do - look at your WW1 layout which was inspiration for someone who made their own version. Me, all my brick work is now coloured using coloured pencils - guess where I learnt that?
So, whilst I may look at stunning layouts where the modeller has skillfully installed an etch belt buckle on an n gauge engine driver that can only be seen by using a mega buck camera, I return to my own modelling World where I do what I want for my pleasure. If others like it that is nice but its my hobby for my pleasure. If I feel as though my modelling needs a kick then I usually build a small evening to complete model. Usually does the trick and kick starts other things that and looking through your blog picking up great hints, tips and inspiration.
Hopefully Phil you will soon get the bug back and produce even more realistic inspiration for the many who tune into your blog each day.
Apologies for the length of this but a big subject to try and sum up in only a few words.
Woody
"I look at serious plastic modellers work and am normally very impressed, but wonder if some of the fun has been lost. The fun we had as kids of just sticking a model together without fretting about the finer details.
ReplyDeleteThis is a hobby. It's supposed to be fun, but do our expectations get in the way of our enjoyment?"
I don't fit things like brake gear to my gauge one locos for that very reason, life is too short. The engines don't actually need it to function, as they are built purely as accurate in outline but functional machines as opposed to finescale models. I leave that fiddly stuff to the serious chaps!
Sharples kits are great for this. Cheap enough that if they go wrong, you don't worry too much. I have a HGLW kit waiting along those lines.
ReplyDelete