Having recently read the fantastic new book Imaginative Realism by James Gurney. I've been inspired to try and use models and modelling a lot more than I do as a means to solve illustrative problems. I was very into modelmaking when I was younger and would regularly play tabletop wargames where just about all the terrain used to support the painted miniatures was hand made, so felt I already had some basic starter knowledge in this respect which could be built upon and utilised. This probably sounds slightly odd but I almost feel like reading Mr Gurney's book has 'legitimised' that kind of approach to illustrative problem solving for me, as seeing someone proffesionally work in this way is an affirmation of the approach itself. So I'm currently all fired up at the moment modelling this and that and randomly painting all manner of bits and pieces from around the house grey (to check out the lighting, textural qualities, and natural form in absence of the distraction of their local colours) and I've also started to create a new '3D box' full of small interesting textured objects, modeled aids, simple forms and such, which is to be an additional 3D facet of my reference library.
Anyhow. Dragon Project! I decided to make a rough model of a dragon last week, and then use it as a tool to create a painting from. Here are a few photos I took along the way...
Might make some miniature weapons soon, so I can use them as visual aids when working on extreme forshortened views, I think a mace would be handy, and a poseable ball and chain could be pretty cool too.
LinksJames Gurneys blog - http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/
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