Some pics of the diorama extension

Hello all, before my surgery I had done some work on the African diorama and I went out there today to take a few pics so I can keep everyone informed of the progress.

I have mentioned that I am changing the old, typical style and lichen-colored foam, foliage, with a new product from Canada called Selkirk Scenery. I chose the light green but besides all of the fall colors they have 4 or 5 in shades of green and olive, greyish / green product that I am ordering species to make the different scrub. The bulk of the plants will be profesionally made by the same guys who do Danny's trees (in fact I am buying more from him shortly), but for small bushes this stuff looks great. Here is the photo of one of my first two I made, sorry it is washed out and you can not see the detail, but as soon as I get better photos I will post new pics.
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Here is the rockwork, I have to lighten it up to make a better paint match, you can see one of the rocks from the original piece and it is lighter and a little browner. I will just add some gray paint, which then will help hide the seams better, where the plaster pieces meet, there is a line, and the paint seems to hide it with it's thickness, but a second coat never hurts. The shape of the final diorama will be an "L" and this piece will go to the right where the warthogs are, all I have to do is make a table and push the two pieces together. Once in place I will add grass and glue red earth so it will be a seamless trans-ision.
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Hope you enjoy these and when I make progress I'll post more photos.

Hi Phil! Very nice rocks, thank You for showing this:-)

Wow Phil, this diorama grows bigger and better with time!
Great rocks, and the new modelled trees will look awesome.

I tried to get a better pic of the new leaves, here they are, but I'm not happy with the photography, for some reason they just blend together in the photo, but when looking at it in person you can see the actual individual leaf. Maybe it is the flash? I will try tomorrow in natural light to see if that makes a difference. These are the pics of the birch trees that I took the lichen off of and replaced with the new leaves. I bought the trunks from a craft shop, here in the states during the Christmas season it is very popular to decorate with winter scenes and they sell the winter style of tree, no leaves and barron after the fall season drop. I add smaller branch tips, and then the leaves. Again sorry the pics do not come out so well, but I will try different things to get a better shot of the individual leaf structure.
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They're really nice trees, I like them a lot.

Those trees are for your North-American display when i am right...
They look very good, but they need some dark "spots" on their trunks as you know, so that is something you have to work on here, to make them even look better i think.

Yes, they are from the North American display, and there are dark marks on the trunks, but the flash washed them out, so they didn't show, but I used a brown mixed with grey and put tick marks all the way up the main trunks. If I take more pics I'll get a close up of the trunks so you can see them.

I also changed the painting process a little. What I did before was use a sponge and dipped it in the color I wanted then drybrushed it across the trunk and branches, now I bought several browns, greys and white as spray paint and just give it a little shot of color, it is much quicker and tends cover the bare tree better. There are so many colors available in spray cans now that it is a great time saver, while not important when I am making a single tree, when I have to do 20 at a time it all adds up.

The sad part of this whole process is I am short on space, time I have, but I had to move the North American diorama because of a lack of space to make room for the extension on Africa. Now that Africa is almost complete, I am going streight to India/Asia so I decided to take it down. I needed practice on the new product so that is why I chose to change all of the birch trees to the new process. I figured I had 17 birch trees in a stand, so that would give me two goals, first to see how they would turn out, and second to find out how much time it should take to make an individual tree. The website says under 4 minutes per tree, and except for the paint drying I don't think I spent that much time per tree, so in my opinion it has several advantages over the typical model train style tree. Those trees take about an hour per tree and that includes cheating by using premade trunks and branches. This new process is so easy I can go back to sculpting the trunks and branches, which is one of the things I really like doing.

Ok then Phil.
Good that you found a quicker way to do this painting-job then...
It must be loads of work, when you add up of the "little' work on those diorama's!

I wonder if you will take those diorama's home, when you are ready for that, and when yes, how you are going to manage that...

WILLYBACOMAN wrote:

Ok then Phil.
Good that you found a quicker way to do this painting-job then...
It must be loads of work, when you add up of the "little' work on those diorama's!

I wonder if you will take those diorama's home, when you are ready for that, and when yes, how you are going to manage that...

I have already put some thought into moving home, first off, I have at least a year before I can even think about going home. I will be there for a visit as soon as I can dive and travel, but to actually move home will be something I can't think about now or I will go crazy. When you have been away for so long, and the goal is to return I don't want to get my hopes up too much just in case it takes longer.

But to the main part of your question. My thoughts are this, I will pack up the animals and trees, they are not actually atteched to the diorama, so that will be easy. The rock work will have to be removed with a razor blade, but again, not too difficult, I moved the mountain off of North America and put it on Africa, so that will be easy. The grass can be rolled up and just brushed back into the standing position when I arrive home. At home I will get a new foam board and build a new table, roll out the grass and put new red earth down. It will be hard, but the only damage can come is to the figures, any landscaping damage can be replaced at home if I have to start from scratch, again it is only time.

I will have a professional packer pack the models and trees, with insurance and slow ground UPS I should be fine. There are several very delicate figures like the geranuks, which I may pack back in Ana's boxes and just carry them on the plane with my carryon bags, but I think if I pack them well enough they should be protected. The main concern is cost, the last time I shipped a lot of delicate pieces, some fossils and shells, it was very expensive, but there was no damage to anything so I can't really complain.

My other option is to leave them here, except for some of my favorite pieces that I want to display, get a glass case and only bring those figures out with me. Most of what I am doing is because I have so much time, when I am at home I have all manners of things to keep me busy, with work and my live animals, so that is another consideration. I will definitly bring all of Ana's sculptures with me, as well as figures like the zebras, and I can get a really nice wood and glass case with lighting to display them.

Any suggestions beyond that would be nice, but Ibeyond that I haven't made any decision as of yet.

It looks that this will all be a lot of work, but that was obvious of course.
I understand very well, that the making of those diorama's, was a way to keep your thoughts on other things too, and to keep you busy while you are recovering from your illness and operations.

And even when you are only able to take your figurines to your own house, there is nothing wrong with displaying them in kabinets or vitrines, together with some nice other decorations like trees and so on.
They are just little displays then.

Well, it isn't so far yet, and we can still enjoy your work on the displays you are working on now.

I like the idea of making little scenes, with a center piece plant and some other landscaping, but just a single species of animal, or maybe a display with the tree, and a main animal and then some small things hidden in the scene.

I may do things like that anyway, even if I rebuild the diorama at home. I have lots of space at my house, I don't have to share my workshop with anyone at home so I have 3 or 4 times the space. The work shop at the house is not nearly as big as the one here in CA, but it is all mine so room isn't a problem.

I really like the landscaping, so I may do a diorama in my spare time, we shall see, but even it I do, I will have some sort of lighted, glass case just to display some of the figures that I really like, at least at first. If I get my way, I will reproduce the African rock pool, maybe even a little bigger then I have now, the Indian diorama, also bigger then I am going to make, and then do several small scenes with animals that I really like, but do not fit into either of those displays.

Something I love is the drill, I could do a single shelf with a pr of drills and an okapi or bongo and all of the plants, on another I could do an arctic display, with polar bears and seals, or maybe penguin and leopard seal if I choose to go south, the possibilities are endless.

I have always wanted to do a scene that was half above the ice and half below. I could mold the underside of the ice, with a big cavern and only a hole for breathing, on the ice top I could have a colony of seals, mothers and young, along with a hunting polar bear and cub. below the ice would be either a norwhale or beluga whale, and maybe some seal mothers swimming. I have a way to make the surface of the water, but still have the cavern hollow so the animals could be hung by wire to look like they are swimming under the ice. If I ever get that far, even though it will only have 4 different species at the most, it would be one of the most intricate builds I have ever done.

Yes, a polar-diorama like that would be nice indeed.
You could mount the ice-shield on the back of the diorama, and then everything above is white, and under the ice would be a kind of blue.
And then mount the animals under the water with wires from the backside or so, by making little holes in them, where you can stick the wire in, so you don't see them from the front.