Roy Cross

Roy Cross

Aviation, Illustration, scale replicas
I remember it well, I was eleven, twelve years old and sometimes I had enough money to buy small scale models Airfix Series 1 (in modelling shops or in the toys sections of big department stores). I knew nothing about Tiger Moth biplane but I could pick it if the illustration was the one that caught my eye. These were very simple kits which could be easily assembled during the afternoon and next these were turned into a toy, but quite a different toy because of they were super-detailed and because I had made them all by myself.   A few pieces got inevitably lost, sometimes these toys were forgotten as I had bought new ones but as their much pretty boxes seemed timeless, I stored them carefully. Much later,…
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Scale Drawings

Scale Drawings

Aviation, scale replicas
SCALE DRAWINGS I have kept some scale drawings I made years ago. Most of them were used to illustrate different issues of the magazine Modelismo & Historia (modelling and history). I draw, nearly always, aircraft although there were cars, ships and military vehicles too. Sometimes I worked on polyester and a few times on film. Obviously I had fountain pens with 0.2-mm or 0.4-mm leads of several brands such as Rotring, Leroy, Mecanorma but I much preferred Faber-Castell ones.  I was forced to be as careful as these were not cheap, I remember cleaning them which was a time-consuming task. A good set of curve templates, circles and ellipses was also mandatory along with a compass and a set of blades. To achieve gorgeous line drawings adhesive weave can be…
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Juan Manuel Villalba

Juan Manuel Villalba

scale replicas
Juan Manuel Villalba I was privileged to work close to him for a few years, each one with our very own drawing board; I worked on my texts while he made his astonishing models in scale, tireless, orderly, surrounded by silence. Before every delicate step I merely looked askance to him. He picked a tiny piece with the tweezers, applied a drop of glue and unhesitatingly, with a steady hand, placed it in its exact location. When I noticed he felt relaxed, I approached just to a have a look to every single fragile detail next to disintegration. He employed merely a dozen small tools, laid onto an always clean and tidy table, plus the assembly instructions and yellow plastic bits. While other areas of the atelier were a real…
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