Inspiration is essential when building a model or a diorama. Inspiration can come from experiences in the real world, it can come from the internet or, as in this case, from books.
For a long time I enjoyed following Claude Joachim and his fabulous diorama builds on Armorama. While most of us build small dioramas that takes a forever to finish, Claude builds huge dioramas relatively quickly.
Inspired by real events in his home country of Luxembourg during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, Claude set about building the center of an spectacular attack on the small town of Clervaux, or Klierf in Luxembourgish. The attack culminated with the attack on the American soldiers defending the old 12th century castle in the middle of the town in the morning of December 16, 1944 and exactly this morning is the setting for his wonderful diorama.
The diorama sensibly only included half the semi-circular castle at this point in order to allow a view of the courtyard and to make it a manageable size. None the less, the diorama ended up as a 3 x 2 meter scene (or 9.8′ x 6.5′)!
The book Capturing Clervaux – A modeler’s tale… is about the construction of this massive diorama in 1:35 scale.
The book is beautifully illustrated with numerous images from the construction and especially for people like me trying to build just a tiny part of a castle, it is most inspiring to see a master at work.
Just like in my castle diorama, Claude began with building a cellar or dungeon and the rest of the castle on top.
The last part of the book are filled with wonderful images of the model on a black background, which really makes them look their best.
After seeing the the great photos, I feel like seeing a lot more. And fortunately, there are several posibilities. Claude Joachim is a quite frequent poster at Armorama, and rumour has it, that a second volume of diorama construction are on the way.
Because even after building his massive castle diorama, Claude went on to make additional dioramas to expand the area in front of the castle. The most recent thread I could find on Armorama tells about construction of parts of the village.
Webpages are great for finding lots of stuff, but when it comes to looking at great pictures, I still prefer a well-printed book. If you feel the same, don’t hesitate to visit Claude Joachim’s site, where you can order Capturing Clervaux – A modeler’s tale… at a very reasonable price.
If you would like to read more about the book, another review of the book can be found on Armorama.
What do you think of the book?
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It is an excellent book indeed! The photos are very nice and the description of how things went together is well stated. It definitely left me wanting more – not that I was disappointed at all – I just enjoyed it a lot. Even after reading through it cover to cover I still go back and re-read sections and ogle over the pictures trying to figure out exactly how I could do that.
PayPal handled all of the currency exchange making it a very easy transaction. My copy was even signed to me from Claude himself!