these windmills are made for ...
Drawing windmills is not very difficult. A cone shape with a few appendages, a cap, a walkway or gallery around the outside for maintaining the sails, these are fairly straightforward.
But I need my mills to shift their weight from side to side. More than this, I need them to walk. I could not get my mind around where the pivot points of anything that might work as legs would be or how the curves would change as the pieces moved.
Decades ago, I had a very enjoyable job as a draftsman in an architectural office. The architect, Bob Biery, Sr., was a generous, lovely man. He once had a poem about streetcars published in the Times-Picayune and, more important to my 19-year old ego, told me he loved the funny poem I wrote for his birthday.
I would walk slowly past the room next door whenever I left the office because that was the model room. Architectural models are imagination made real. The miniature scale models of buildings show exactly how the massing really looks, how shadows will fall and and give a feel for the spaces which no plan or drawing alone can do. These cardboard marvels have saved professionals from innumerable brick and mortar mistakes. Sometimes, at least before CAD programs became de rigueur, the models were used as models for drawing.
At 10 pm last night, I remembered this and decided to make a model. The most amazing thing is that I had BRADS in my drawer. Not quite medieval technology, but, still, the odds were not good.
Now, I have more of a feel for what the motion might look like. Miles to go before I sleep, but, hurray! Baby steps.