The Little World

Or your œuf?

Is your modelling pressing you toward one coherent thing, or are you flailing in all directions? Perhaps flailing is your destiny, and you are fulfilling it.

Do not despair. Leonardo Da Vinci was nearly fifty years old before he built his first model of the MISSOURI. And look how he flourished in later years. Mind you, there were a lot of cement fingerprints on that battleship…

If you build what takes your fancy, eventually your fancy will tell you what you are destined to build. Your subconscious starts revealing your true interests. At that point you can panic and run away…or deliberately buy different models to prove that you’re not in a rut…or research a new variant of your speciality.

I built everything I could as a kid, because kids couldn’t be fussy. Any model was a good model – at least in the box and unbuilt. Some proved to be scorching stinkers when we actually came to cementing them, but it improved our character. Mine’s near perfect…

Now I build 1:72 and 1:76 models pretty much exclusively. There are little departures sometimes, but they are rare. My collection is an eclectic one, but there are a few repeats in it made from kits that have come to hand through gifts or luck, and there are enough instances of variation in real aircraft to justify the extra ones.

What are the benefits of concentration?

a. The same paints and decals will stretch over more kits. Of course you’ll always buy more paint but it need not be every pot in the shop.

b. Spare parts in the same scale are like money left in trouser pockets. Small change can add up to a real lifesaver.

c. Collections are wonderful. You can contrast and compare similar models if they are the same size. You can build entire units.

d. You get to be the recognised expert in something. Eventually the anoraks start quoting you when they tell other people that their paint is the wrong colour. It can be a daunting responsibility.

e. You get better by learning from your errors. Or you get worse by ignoring them. I cannot say which I recommend more.