A wonderful illustration of the old rathaus in Tilsit. This is just one of several such structures on which I have based my own model rathaus.
Just a quick post today -- Saturday -- since I want to get on to applying a white gesso basecoat to my dozen Baltic German town center buildings. For those of you who enjoy making your own model buildings for wargaming, there are loads of professionally made videos on Youtube that deal with the subject of architectural model-making, something that has fascinated me since I was about five years old, when I made the acquaintance of "John the Hippy." John was a young architect who worked closely with my father at the time.
In the early 1970s, before my father became a stockbroker, he worked for a large design firm in the business end of things. At some point, about 1971 or '72, he was assigned to oversee the conceptualization and design, by a team of which John was somehow a member, of a series of planned professional buildings. Several times, usually midday on a Saturday, my father took my sister and I along in our dark green Volkswagen Beetle to John's apartment where the two would review and discuss various models John was making for the firm. Usually, while the two adults conversed in the living room, my sister and I got to watch TV in John's bedroom and bounce around on his king-sized waterbed. It as the early'70s don't forget.
Anyway, John, who was in his mid- to late 20s, had very long brown hair, parted in the middle, with a beard and mustache. Not unlike George Harrison at that point come to think of it although the general look was very common for young men around the world in the wake of the British Invasion, the Prague Spring, Vietnam, the Sexual Revolution, and the general loosening of societal norms that came about in the late 1960s and early '70s . As a result of John's outward appearance, which was in stark contrast to my 29-year-old father's still very short hair and suits (Monday through Friday), my sister and I dubbed the former, and have referred to him forever after as John. . . the Hippy. I always think of John the Hippy whenever I am in the midst of making model buildings, like the current batch for instance, these many years later. I wonder what ol' John might be up to now? Probably well into retirement and living in Florida or Arizona, with very little hair left at all.
But back to architectural models! I have stumbled recently onto a fascinating series about how architects conceive, build, and use their model structures on YouTube. Architectural Model Making has many useful tips for thinking about and making your own structures, albeit for wargaming purposes. I thought that it would be a nice idea to share the link here for anyone who is interested in buttressing (Get it?) their own model-making with additional skills, or taking a stab at the activity if making model houses and the like is something you have yet to try. It's just one more fascinating branch of the wargaming hobby tree.
-- Stokes
Basecoating with white acrylic gesso underway on Saturday afternoon. Eventual painting of the buildings will be done with acrylic craft paints like those shown in a previous post.
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