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Jaws

The fair: a vast sea of grey

So here I went to the fair with my small dio under the arm. The fun began with the judges scratching their heads trying to find the right category to sort it. I finally made it to “historical –hopes”; no “confirmed” for me then awright. I went to see the other stuff presented and left with that same feeling like a cross between sadness and slight anger without really knowing how to interpret it. Then the following day I met a particularly articulate modeler, the kind of guys who’s out every week-end when there’s the tail of a modeling fair at 500kms round his home. At one point he showed me a very finely sculpted Ork and looking at this melancholic wrinkled face, I saw the light –or more precisely I couldn’t see anything anymore.

I was just in the middle of some sort of grey fog.

No matter how much light you would put on all those figs THEY WOULD ALL LOOK LIKE THEY ARE PAINTED THE SAME WAY, just like everybody followed the same “thou shallt and thou shallt not” gospel, and indeed most of the figs seemed to have been painted with some grey undercoat that shone through everything, be it Napoleonian soldier or Ork. The same heavy eyelids and too much shadows on the faces. I told that to my new friend in a very heated manner and he laughed kindly. He said “I see what you mean and that’s the way it is! Want it or not, Diego Ruina wins every show he enters in, then -as he wins- all the other guys paint like Diego Ruina, hence that uniformity you can see in that show. But do you believe it isn’t the same thing with Panzers dioramas? Everybody tries to emulate Mig, every panzer diorama looks like its neighbor all the same. And then it’s even worse with panzers as almost nobody knows how to use pigments properly”.

So that’s a lost game alright, but then those figure painters and diorama makers forget the main thing : nothing shines from their stuff, they were all doing the same mistakes: nicely painted shadows on trousers and shirt but absolutely no shadows on the stones or architectural details they were standing near to, pathetic looking bits of ferns done out of hastily cut broom hair or -even worse- photoetch near the handsome figure, figs scattered over too much place in a scenette so that everybody can admire each beautifully painted miniature, but scenes that simply don’t click as a whole etc etc.

Sure the hands of those masters were steady but art is certainly wasn’t. Sure my poor fig was certainly weakly painted but then I thought it really shone through that sea of grey. So I went back home the heart very light indeed, thinking that only a few years of practice and a good optivisor were between me and what I think I am worth of.

Back home, after having spend another week to perfect that small diorama, I was pretty happy to see that in the end “jaws” provides good vibrations as never did one of my dioramas got as many appraisal from people outside the modeling world. People seem to think it’s a relaxed and positive work while in reality it is not. Finally I made my own interpretations for Jaws, that work echoes my own fears about raising a kid in our world: uncertainty front and behind, nothing above and danger below.

I finally wish to thank everybody from Kitmaker and also Les Colleurs who proved me that some people in the French modeling world were worth shaking their hands to, and basically everyone who watched and commented throughout that experience.