WindSpinner's World
East Tennessee is the home of many fine and friendly craft-folk and artists.
One of these gentle folk is WindSpinner -- and this is a doorway to his
world.
WindSpinner, whose real name is John Beckwith,
is an old hippy living in the fashionable southeast hills of Rutledge,
Tennessee. Since becoming a landed immigrant in East Tennessee John has
been involved in many things including photo-retouching, camera repair,
drawing, weaving, glass bead making, watercolor, woodwork, computer graphics,
gardening and wood carving. He has written and published a pictorial history
of Grainger county and hopes to someday be fully accepted in his adopted
home.
As with many old hippys, centering in on just a few
things, let alone one, can be a problem. He is learning
to listen to the wind tell tales of the old days as it sings through the
Clinch Mountains of East Tennessee, and as a result has chosen the name
WindSpinner for his artistic endevours. While still doing computer graphics
and retouching, WindSpinner is finding happiness making doll furniture & miniatures,
watercolors and replacing missing carvings on old furniture.
Largely self-taught, John tries to integrate the history, imagery and folk-lore
of Grainger County into his miniatures and watercolors. As a result, most of the miniatures
he makes are representative of items that would have been found in East Tennessee
in years past.
WindSpinner loves the peace of the Clinch mountains and has a small shop behind
the house that he shares with his good friends Isaac, DewDrop and Eidledog. A valuable lesson
recently learned is that it is better to learn to use the tools you have than to buy
more tools. Only buy a tool if you really need it and have thought it over for
at least a month, and only if you can't make the tool yourself. A tool you make yourself can
be handed down, with pride, to your grandchildren.
WindSpinner's Miniatures are for sale. Most of those shown here (and many others) are currently
on display at:
The Miniature & Dollhouse Shop
5204 Homberg Drive, Knoxville, TN 37919
865-584-1907
Closed Wed. & Thurs.
Currently WindSpinner is working on a model of the Vardy (Hancock Co.) School, complete with all 13
rooms and 96 windows! (Note: they are 12-pane windows!) The school itself is pretty much beyond repair
and the Vardy Historical Society wanted a
model for their museum. The project presents several design problems. Portability is desired, so using 1"=1'
scale is not possible as it wouldn't fit into a pickup truck. 1/2"=1' scale was decided upon. This means
that windows and some trim will need to be hand built as no suitable pre-made items exist.
Traditionally doll houses have fronts or sides that open or open backs. This would not work for the Vardy
School as some of the interior rooms and halls would not be visible. As this model needs to be as accurate
and show as much detail as possible, it would not be good to leave any sides open. After much thought and
figuring (Windspinner is often chided for spending excessive time figuring and thinking) it was decided
to hinge the end of the basement wall but leave all walls on the first floor intact. The second floor
will lift off, giving a full view of the first floor. The roof will lift off the second floor so that all
rooms can be seen.
We had difficulty reaching all the rooms on the second floor as it was too dangerous to walk in parts
of the building. We did the best we could
measuring and hope that Members of the Historical Society can help fill in gaps. Yet to be decided on
are the wiring of the second floor and the best method to reproduce the 3 inch pine flooring and 3"
horizontal ridged metal siding in 1/2" scale.
Windspinner welcomes your ideas, sugestions or thoughts you might have concerning this project. It gives
one a good feeling to help preserve another bit of East Tennessee history.
To view the work in progress Click Here.
To view The Completed Project Click Here.
To learn more about the
Vardy School Click Here.
Please use your browser's back button to return to this site.
To check out WindSpinner's WaterColor lessons check the following links
.
Watercolor Lesson 1: The Basics
- So you want to get into watercolor and try your wings, but you don't
want to spend a fortune before you find out if it's for you?
Watercolor Lesson 2: The Basic Wash
- The wash in watercolor is what sets it apart from other painting and
drawing media. When one paints with oil or acrylic or draws with pencil,
the pigment stays where you put it on the drawing surface. This makes the
above media more precise in their execution, unless of course you decide
to paint your canvas with a shot gun!
Watercolor Lesson 3: The Tree, and a
Recap - For those of you carefully following these epistles, you
will recall that it's really hard to paint light, transparent color over
dark tree trunks.
Watercolor Lesson 4: Dry Brush Technique
- By this time you have successfully created an overall wash, and then
worked succeedingly darker washes into the picture, thus defining the basic
shapes. After the paper was dry, you sponged in the trees and trunks, and
by now the picture is looking really, really fine, BUT it seems to be lacking
in fine detail. Enter the Dry Brush.
Watercolor Lesson 5: The Brush
- Let's talk a bit about brushes. What you need and why. Watercolor brushes
must have spring. They must be able to able to bounce merrily across your
paper, and not go limp like an old rag. Camel hair and it's ilk are too
soft, too limp. You want sable, it has more spring.
Watercolor Lesson 6: A Moment of Encouragement!
- Why We're Doing So Good! (A Watercolor World Moment of Encouragement!)
Watercolor Lesson 7: Timing - the Critical
Moment - Timing can be very critical, especially when working on
wet paper. Just when do you put brush to wet paper? How wet should it be?
You will find that different pigments react differently to wet paper -
some spread more than others. Learning exactly how wet the paper should
be is very important. It called timing.
Watercolor Lesson 8: A Word About Pigments
- No two watercolorists agree on palette colors. Some have fall, winter,
spring and summer pallettes, and some think greens are sinful. So, what
I say here is personal opinion as regards colors.
Questions about these pages? E-mail WindSpinner
© 1999 John Beckwith Last Revised 01/02/07 - All Rights Reserved