This is a fanciful recreation of a city block in my former neighborhood — the buildings, small shops, people, and constant activity. I made this particular piece of wall art for my sister, who still lives in that neighborhood and is also a big fan of Hitchcock's "Rear Window."
VIEW MORE PERSPECTIVES
Click or Tap & Swipe
This is a fanciful recreation of a city block in my former neighborhood — the buildings, small shops, people, and constant activity. I made this particular piece of wall art for my sister, who still lives in that neighborhood and is also a big fan of Hitchcock's "Rear Window."
VIEW MORE PERSPECTIVES
Click or Tap & Swipe
A Christmas gift with a "Rear Window" vibe.
I gave this to my sister as a Christmas gift. Instead of hanging it, she decided to place it recessed on the top shelf of a large bookcase with some remote overhead lighting. It was amazing how much impact the colored lights made - changing the entire scene from daylight to dusk and then night.
The construction is about 20 inches long and 14 inches high. I started by making the bordering wood frame and a backing. After this, I painted a background scene with clouds to be placed behind the buildings.
Next I needed to determine what scale I would be working with for the individual pieces in the scene. I decided on train O Scale background building flats to help establish the neighborhood. These were plastic, white and blank as I wanted to create my own detail work. But Amazon also has a wide variety of background buildings, many with carved details on them already.
Acrylic craft paints were used for all details and for aging/weathering the buildings. I wanted to give the scene an overall three-dimensional feel, so before securing the buildings, I mounted different-sized strips of wood behind them to stagger their depth. This also allowed me to put in window scenes.
The unpainted people, benches, landscaping, and other outdoor items like the miniature animals, are also O Scale accessories for model train scenes. I'm fortunate that my husband has a train layout, and his setup gave me a lot of ideas. Many of the items I needed could be found on Amazon. If not, I went to a train hobby shop.
I wanted the presence of figures in the scene to showcase happening activities, but not to be a big focal point themselves. I decided that they should be silhouettes with no real detail, and their shadowed outlines in the windows would represent the motion, sights and sounds within.
For the silhouettes, I just spent a few hours online searching for silhouette images of activities typical in storefronts and apartments. Then I sized, printed and cut them out to fit the specific windows. You'd be amazed at what you can find.After completing that task I felt there needed to be some involvement at the forefront of the piece, but still didn't want figures to be a focal point. I ended up using some actual train figurines and decided I would leave them blank and white. This way everything inside and set back is a shadow silhouette and everything in the forefront, including the figure leaning out of the window into the light, is white. I really like the overall effect.
