Crawl space nighthawks

While I enjoy the occasional model railway magazine, unlike most other modellers, I’ve never had space to keep them. For years, I have captured significant articles in binders, and this enabled me to save many feet of shelf space in ads alone. However, my idea of significance has grown narrower with each passing year. The rate of shelf consumption has diminished considerably and there is zero danger of burial by paper.

So when I discovered a forgotten trove of articles a teenaged me had squirrelled away in my mother’s Ottawa crawl space, I knew most of it wouldn’t make it back to Vancouver. There were a couple of keepers, however, and a 1989 article by John Armstrong struck a chord that resonated with some of my thinking that I wrote down almost two years ago.

John notes three key factors we tend to neglect in “maintream” model railroading:

The angular perspectives of a close-up viewpoint.
The interplay of light and shade.
The presence (or at least the suggestion) of people.

He goes on to explore these factors in his recreation of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. The bulk of the article talks about the technical considerations in recreating this subject, right down to correcting for the colour balance of the bulbs he used to light the building.

While I have no interest in recreating someone else’s painting in my modelling (unless it was Monet’s Gare St Lazare, oh my!), those factors are something to remember as I refine scenes in Pembroke. How can I create more opportunities for shadow? How can I continue to find interesting angles in a largely rectilinear world? How will I leverage people to strengthen the composition?