Copyright 2020 Nicholas Kalis
Book Review
How To Build Dioramas
Shepard Paine
104 pages
Color and Black and White Photos
Kalmbach Publishing
Copyright 1980
Notice the price - $ 11.95! Your copy will cost a bit more - don't dawdle, inflation could one day take this book to $100. And notice the copyright - this book has stood the test of time over forty years. My copy shows it had gone into a sixth printing just by 1989 - it has been reprinted, I dare say, many times since.
Levity aside, this is considered the greatest book ever published about dioramas. But is it a great deal more - it instructs about painting (especially useful if you are a large scale modeler); planning a scene; scratch building; shadow boxes; and more.
While many will quarrel with this assertion, a model railroad is in some ways a series of scenes - dioramas if you will. Paine's book will help you design scenes that tell a coherent story. If you are determined not to accept Paine's insights, at the very least, you will have fund reading this book. Not to press my point too strongly, you will, at the least, enjoy the illustrations, photographs, and their caption.
Shep is no longer with us having passed away in 2015 at the relatively young age of 69. Howard Sheperd Paine was the first child born to American parents in post-WWII Berlin. He has also authored Building and Painting Scale Figures, Modeling Tanks and Military Vehicles, and How to Photograph Scale Models. To learn more about Paine, visit http://www.boxdioramas.com/sheperd-paine/
Revised November 26 2020
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