John Allard
Staff Writer
Hello and welcome to the tool section of our newsletter. Today and in the following months I will take you on a guided tour of some of our most common tools used to create mini works of art, as well as some of the more elaborate job purposed ones. While some of you may be familiar with the tools I cover, others (I am hoping) will be intrigued and inspired to go out and try something new.
The tools of our trade come in many varied shapes and sizes, power and non-powered, expensive to free, with purposes as varied as the types of mini we produce. Today I want to go over a tool that has been in use in one form or another since man started to create Art: the caliper.
A Caliper is most common as a non-powered hand tool that measures sizes from reference material and is used to transfer those measurements to the artwork being created. In the days of wall painting it may have been a stick with a finger used to take a measurement from the top, then transferred to the wall in order to faithfully and accurately render it so others were sure to understand what was drawn.
In its common form today the caliper comes in two basic configurations, the type used by engineers, draftsmen and hobbyists to measure precise units is called a slide caliper (see image 1, above), while the other, more commonly used by sculptors, illustrators and painters, is a bow or outside caliper (see image 2, below right).
Personally I use both, as a toymaker I used my slide caliper to keep my work in exacting proportion to the reference material provided to me by the company I was creating for (thus ensuring continued work from them) and the bow caliper to take quick measurements on my sculpture to maintain symmetry. For instance, when doing portraiture work a simple bow caliper can be used to check the distance between the eyes, or to accurately transcribe the size of the subject's nose, the width of the head,
etc.
A great and simple way to accurately reproduce something from reference is to use your computer (or a friend's) to print out an image of what you are attempting to make at the size you want to make it. Spread your calipers out until they line up with the part of the image you are working on and compare that distance on your work. This way you avoid having shapes that are out of proportion to the rest of the piece. With a slide caliper the same process is used, but with the added information of exact measurements in either American or Metric units. The slide style caliper also gives you the ability to increase or decrease sizes proportionally using simple math and the measurements of the reference piece.
The caliper is a handy tool that every artist should have in their arsenal just for those times when you think to yourself "is that the right size or is it a little off? Hmmm..." with a quick check of the calipers you know for sure and your work is all the more accurate for it. For the miniature artist, a simple drafting style caliper called a divider (image 3, to the left) can be purchased relatively on the cheap from any office supply store's drafting/art section.
I hope you found this information helpful, and until the next time, "go out and make something!"
Custom Dolls, Houses & Miniatures / CDHM