War, yay!

Anyways, where do I start?

How about in Sarajevo, 1914, where an Austrian archduke has just been shot.

Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were the first casualties in a war that would kill 15-20 million, and affect countless more through PTSD, wounds, or being displaced.

So how do I factor in?

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know I like war, A LOT, and of course, when the project came along, I was as happy as a clam.

We started by going to MoNoVa (The Museum of North Vancouver), and here we learned about museum design, and generally figured out how museums operated their exhibits, and of course, being PLP, we reflected (Who Woulda’ Thunk…), my notes weren’t the best, but my brain was looking to the future, where I would end up constructing a diorama to represent the “Glory of War compared to the Reality”, I did this my modelling a small scene representing a trench raid during the battle of Vimy ridge, Canada’s greatest victory in the war.

I’m gonna get into the modelling/painting part here, so feel free to skip this part 🙂 

I started with some Pink Insulation Foam sheeting, as well as a elevated area I’d made prior, to complement this, I dug some shell holes, then made barbed wire (Link to Article that I used as a guide at the end) and trench siding made out of popsicle sticks (The trenches were already in the elevation, handy.) 

Then I painted the figures. I stopped by my local hobby store to buy some paint and green stuff, and then it was time to have some fun. I’ll post my Painting Guides separately, and include Pictures, but I was able to sculpt Feldmütze hats (Cut the helmet so it’s flat, then put a appropriately sized circle on top of the “Helmet” on a slight angle) and bedrolls (Wrap a small sausage shape around the neck and cut lines into them at regular intervals) on the Germans, unfortunately for the “Canadians” I wasn’t able to obtain the right miniatures, so I was forced to use Americans as “Proxies” (This is the SOLE reason I’m going to fail this project), but painted with Vallejo “English Uniform”, they looked convincing enough to pass, unless you look at the machine gunner, who has a Chauchat machine gun, used by many countries, Canada not among them…

I poured dirt on several parts of the diorama, and tea leaves on others, this was solely for texture and to provide of slight elevation changes. I also broke some small parts of the siding off to represent shell damage. I painted everything with an undercoat of Dark Brown (Any will do) and then heavily dry brushed with Apple Barrel “Toffee”, but that made it look like Mars, so maybe pick a less saturated medium brown, next was Vallejo IDF Gray 83 as an incomplete cover on the terrain. To finish, I painted (rather incompletely, but on purpose) over the entire thing with white, to represent the Snow in the scene (This was also lightly dry brushed on some miniatures to represent them being snowed on). I painted the Wood with IDF Gray 83 to represent aged wood.

Barbed Wire Guide: https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=4576

Anyways, onto the learning.

Pt.2 Ehxibition

The exhibition was, can you believe it, even a little bit fun. Setup was quick, and despite all of this, I only *slightly* broke down in the pre-exhibition hours. I think we could improve the path finding for the library, as not many people showed up to our part of the exhibition but when people did show up I had an excellent time talking about my passions and connecting World War One to other, more obscure wars, such as the Iran-Iraq war, and even small portions of the war in Ukraine.

 

Exhibition cleanup was a new record, and I think experience was the main factor, as just like with F1 pit stops, experience and practice are key.

This project and exhibition showed me that overthinking is a problem for my learning and that when I have to talk about a topic I love, I enjoy the presentation more. Perhaps this was also partly due to the sun being up the entire time, as opposed to the winter exhibitions.