An Allegory of Venus and Cupid

One of my earliest forays into doing boxed dioramas was to translate a classical painting “An Allegory of Venus and Cupid” by Angelo Bronzino for King Francis I. The painting features the King’s mistress as Venus surrounded by Cupid, Rage, Father Time and Muses, pigeon and masks.
 

                                         
This piece was first made around early 2000. Many of the figures were simple conversions of Preiser nudes and sculpting.
The egg was a Xmas decoration made of two plastic halves, One half had an opening to which I added a simple brass hinge for opening and closing it. A dcorative stand was also added for the piece to resemble a Faberge egg decoration. You can see the original post here:
https://miniature-figurine.blogspot.com/search?q=allegory
                                        

 
In 2019, I repainted the egg with gold paint and created a crackled effect.
 

 

Musings on this blog

 Perhaps it is time to revive this blog.

I have travelled the well-beaten route of amassing a large grey army and have painted, converted and sculpted many figures along this journey. Along the way, I have been dabbling and honing some skill sets in the pursuit of this engrossing hobby. Many plastic and metal casualties have been left in my wake. Many of these are placed into a spares box awaiting their re-amination.

However, the constant pursuit of cataloguing and collecting endless series of miniatures is not my main interest. The miniature displayed singly or in serried ranks on the shelves remains largely out of context. It is an objet d’art placed as a decorative item in a collection. Treasured and valued only by the collector himself or another like-minded soul, it’s relevance is lost to the uninitiated.

Context can be largely created by labelling the figure, or harmonizing the collection into thematic periods. Perhaps in order to minimise a jarring display, the collection could comprise of similarly scaled pieces or types such as full scale figures, flats, busts and so on. Furthermore, the figure can be placed onto a well-crafted base by itself or interacting with other figures in a vignette. More figures could be further grouped with ordinance and buildings to create larger dioramas. But when these are visualized, the illusion is destroyed when one looks through the piece at other wandering souls and non-related objects in the background.

My main interest in this endeavour is to create an artform from these miniatures. One of the most complex of this approach is to create shadowbox dioramas. Here, the full illusion is maintained because the visual pleasure is confined to a single plane to maintain the full context. Curious onlookers will get in real close to try to view behind the figures but their viewpoints will be limited by the viewing window. Now, mustering all the skillsets and experience gleaned, I can fully engross myself in each project.

More to come...

Musings on this blog

Perhaps it is time to revive this blog.

I have travelled the well-beaten route of amassing a large grey army and have painted, converted and sculpted many figures along this journey. Along the way, I have been dabbling and honing some skill sets in the pursuit of this engrossing hobby. Many plastic and metal casualties have been left in my wake. Many of these are placed into a spares box awaiting their re-amination.

However, the constant pursuit of cataloguing and collecting endless series of miniatures is not my main interest. The miniature displayed singly or in serried ranks on the shelves remains largely out of context. It is an objet d’art placed as a decorative item in a collection. Treasured and valued only by the collector himself or another like-minded soul, it’s relevance is lost to the uninitiated.

Context can be largely created by labelling the figure, or harmonizing the collection into thematic periods. Perhaps in order to minimise a jarring display, the collection could comprise of similarly scaled pieces or types such as full scale figures, flats, busts and so on. Furthermore, the figure can be placed onto a well-crafted base by itself or interacting with other figures in a vignette. More figures could be further grouped with ordinance and buildings to create larger dioramas. But when these are visualized, the illusion is destroyed when one looks through the piece at other wandering souls and non-related objects in the background.

My main interest in this endeavour is to create an artform from these miniatures. One of the most complex of this approach is to create shadowbox dioramas. Here, the full illusion is maintained because the visual pleasure is confined to a single plane to maintain the full context. Curious onlookers will get in real close to try to view behind the figures but their viewpoints will be limited by the viewing window. Now, mustering all the skillsets and experience gleaned, I can fully engross myself in each project.

More to come...