The back of the box must be taken off and hinged on again in the form of a door. This is to enable the youthful showman easily to execute repairs if anything “goes wrong with the works.”
It is now time to turn attention to the most important portion of the show—the scenes.
If the reader possesses any artistic ability, he cannot do better than paint them himself. A few hints upon this subject will perhaps be useful.
He must pay a visit to a stationer’s, and purchase a supply of white drawing-card, such as is used by artists. A fair-sized sheet costs only two cents. Having procured this he must lightly sketch, in pencil, the first scene upon it. If he be at all doubtful as to his artistic abilities, however, the following is an excellent plan to adopt.
Armed with a pencil and piece of tracing-paper cut to the size of the scenes, he should carefully examine the various illustrations appearing in magazines. A short search should reveal a mountain, a mass of foliage, a waste of sea, or some other subject suitable for the background of the first scene. He must then get to work with the pencil and trace this upon the tracing-paper. Another search will bring to light something adaptable for the middle-distance. Lastly, a group of objects for the foreground must be selected, and the whole transferred first to the tracing-paper and thence to the drawing-card. Thus by taking a background from one illustration and a foreground from another, almost any scene may be built up.
After being sketched-in in pencil the scenes must be colored. This should be done with a view to general effect rather than perfect detail. First the predominant colors should be laid on in a bold wash, then the objects in the background painted in. The coloring must be as vivid as possible, in fact, almost gaudy.
Instead of each scene representing a single incident, it is preferable to weave the whole series into some sort of a narrative, such as “A Voyage round the World,” “With Shackleton to the South Pole,” or, if the reader is very imaginative, “Round the United States in an Aeroplane.”
Having procured the scenes—they can number from half-a-dozen to a score—proceed to fix them in the show. [Fig. 5] gives an interior view of scene-raising apparatus.
Fig. 5.—Interior view of scene-raising apparatus.