Full size Indian diorama

The flowers are beautiful Phil. I love the colors.

Wildheart wrote:

We have many of those flowers living in Bucharest(either on flower beds or balconies).
They're name is ''panseluţă''.There is also a wild species I have met in the forest,which is a lot smaller.
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Are they pansies WH? Your pic is quite small I can't tell. We get loads of wild Pansies around the fields, they particularly come up after the crop has been harvested. But we also have cultivated ones in pots in the garden.

l did not know they were called pansies
thanks for the info,harriet

[ quote = "Wild Heart "] l did not know they were called pansies : D
thanks for the info, harriet :! : [ / quote ]

Pansies are a very common plant, but the ones I am thinking of sometimes are called honeysuckle or blue bailer, and they are a cold hardy Indian native. In the wild the color and size of the flower are duller and smaller, but I wanted it to be big and pretty so I used the combo of the wild plant and the domestic size of the flower.

Don't worry,Phil!They are beautiful!
In other places,Diorama flowers were just spots of paint!

I was talking to Danny and he told me that banyon trees do not usually have vines growing on them so I decided to remove them and place them in a different spot. I chose the raised riverbank wall as the spot to put them, and as nothing is glued I can move add or remove them from that spot with no trouble. I also made a couple of trees, two of which I put up on the diorama just to get a photo of them. They are smaller trees, one not much bigger then a bush, but I like the foliage. I found that the foliage that Danny's sculptor uses is much more money, but I like it as much as the Selkirk Scenery that I also use.

Here are the photos, please make some comments on the different vine leaves and the look of them growing from the river up to the top of the river bank.
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The vines look really good there too. I love the trees.

Very good place for vines And trees are excellent , very pretty foliage

The trees are beautiful. I love the foliage. The vines look great going up the river bank.

Philter4 wrote:

[ quote = "Wild Heart "] l did not know they were called pansies : D
thanks for the info, harriet :! : [ / quote ]

Pansies are a very common plant, but the ones I am thinking of sometimes are called honeysuckle or blue bailer, and they are a cold hardy Indian native. In the wild the color and size of the flower are duller and smaller, but I wanted it to be big and pretty so I used the combo of the wild plant and the domestic size of the flower.

I thought "honeysuckles" was bushes we called "chèvrefeuilles" in France

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Philter4 wrote:

I was talking to Danny and he told me that banyon trees do not usually have vines growing on them so I decided to remove them and place them in a different spot. I chose the raised riverbank wall as the spot to put them, and as nothing is glued I can move add or remove them from that spot with no trouble. I also made a couple of trees, two of which I put up on the diorama just to get a photo of them. They are smaller trees, one not much bigger then a bush, but I like the foliage. I found that the foliage that Danny's sculptor uses is much more money, but I like it as much as the Selkirk Scenery that I also use.

Here are the photos, please make some comments on the different vine leaves and the look of them growing from the river up to the top of the river bank.

I love the small trees, IMHO, they look very natural. It's great Phil.

I also like very much the ideas of dressing the raised riverbank with vines, it was too naked before. But I'm not agree with the vines growing from the river... Vines can't raised from a water environnement, they grow in dryer and poor soil. To look more natural, the vines must grow from the upper bank and "fall down" to the river I think. It will look more realist. I hope it can help

[ quote = " Kikimalou "] I love the small trees , IMHO , they look very natural. It's great Phil

I also like very much the ideas of dressing the raised river bank with vines , it was too naked before. : D But I'm not agree with the vines growing from the river ... Vines can not raised from a water environnement , they grow in dryer and poor soil. To look more natural, the vines must grow from the upper bank and "fall down " to the river I think. It will look more realist. I hope it can help :) [ / quote ]

I agree with the vines growing from the bank and hanging down, but these came out of the trees and had the bases attached to them already. I probably will change them at some point before the end of the build, but for now I didn't want to cut the bases off incase I add them to a tree at some point. I can always use the current vines in the trees and make more for the river bank. There is a blue clock vine from India that I love, it has a bright blue, 5 petal flower that is big enought to be reproduced in scale, so maybe I can make them for the wall.

I have some more work to do, and I will use comments like this to make the dio better.

Philter4 wrote:

I agree with the vines growing from the bank and hanging down, but these came out of the trees and had the bases attached to them already. I probably will change them at some point before the end of the build, but for now I didn't want to cut the bases off incase I add them to a tree at some point. I can always use the current vines in the trees and make more for the river bank. There is a blue clock vine from India that I love, it has a bright blue, 5 petal flower that is big enought to be reproduced in scale, so maybe I can make them for the wall.

I have some more work to do, and I will use comments like this to make the dio better.

Ok, I understand now

Kikimalou wrote:

I thought "honeysuckles" was bushes we called "chèvrefeuilles" in France

That's the only Honeysuckle I know too.

Here in California as a child the plant we called honey suckle was a blue flower and if you seperated it from the stem right at the base of the flower a small drop of sweet "honey" (I know it isn't honey, but that is the best way to describe this drop of liquid) could be squeezed out of the flower at the break. We would pick the flowers and lick the drop until we got in trouble for picking all of the flowers from the gardens around the neighborhood. I don't know the correct name, just that to me it looks a lot like a blue bailer (check spelling) which is a cold hardy bush or ground cover found throughout India.

Philter4 wrote:

Here in California as a child the plant we called honey suckle was a blue flower and if you seperated it from the stem right at the base of the flower a small drop of sweet "honey" (I know it isn't honey, but that is the best way to describe this drop of liquid) could be squeezed out of the flower at the break. We would pick the flowers and lick the drop until we got in trouble for picking all of the flowers from the gardens around the neighborhood. I don't know the correct name, just that to me it looks a lot like a blue bailer (check spelling) which is a cold hardy bush or ground cover found throughout India.

There's another plant I know, it's called a Hoya [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I think this is the same plant you're talking about! It's native to Asia. We had one when I was little as well and used to eat the honey from the flowers.

I made a couple of plants for India in the last couple of days. I was looking for some Indian tropical plants to go into the jungle part of the diorama. I chose to make a crape mertyle and a matchstick plant. Both are native to india, and both are very attractive tropical forest plants.

Here is a photo, I put the muntjak in for scale, it is the Kaiyodo model.
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very nice bushes Phil.
how did you make the flowers ?

[ quote = " Kikimalou "] very nice bushes PHIL
how did you make the flowers ? [ / quote ]

Kiki, the flowers were made in two different ways, first the matchstick flowers. I took some clay and rolled it out onto a piece of wax paper. When it was thin enough to fit into a paper punch I punched out a 1/2 inch daisy pattern. Once that was hardened I painted it purple with blue tips and then cut the petals off. the petals were glued to the flower stalk which is made from thin gauge florist wire.

The crape mertyle was harder to do, even though the matchstick plant is tiny, the whole thing is only an inch and a half. For the crape mertyle I rolled out clay the same way I did for the matchstick. Once that was done I used a 1/4 inch sun paper punch and punched out the clay. When that was done, but before the clay was hardened I took a piece of wax covered wood with holes I drilled in it just to do things like this. I used a stylus tool and pressed the sun shape into the wood hole until the rays were almost touching eachother. Then I removed them and baked them to harden. When that was done I painted them and attached them to the tree. I also tried paper with the same procedure but no baking needed, and the results were so close that I am not sure I would use clay again. The paper flower is so close in looks to the clay that I have to decide if I do another one what I am going to have to decide what type of flower I am going to make, paper or clay. The leaves are made of painted paper, I painted one side hunter green and the other moss olive as that is the color that is on the ones by my house. The trunk is a combination of burnt umber and brick red, and that is how I did the crape mertyle.

Lovely flowers Phil!With the new trees from Danny and your forest floor plants,the jungle will be growing very fast!

They are beautiful Phil, amazing!

Definately beautiful. You keep coming up with more and more ideas and then making them. Absolutely amazing. I can't wait to see them on the dio.

Thanks for all of the nice compliments , I have not done much on the diorama itself as lately the weather has been a typical August with 100 + degrees and in the shop it is about 20 * hotter so I try to stay out of there during the day. I have been making plants as you have seen in earlier photos so last night I put some out on the dio to get some photos.

Here is the new lotus that I think is just fantastic. It is truly a beautiful plant , and a lot tougher then I thought. It came on a stand , whichI want to remove when I pour the final layer of water. Each leaf was stalk and flower comes out of the stand but right now I do not have another way to stand it up
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This is a photo of some of the tropical plants that I have made. The raised part of the diorama is going to be tripical with lots of smaller plants and a really big tree. It will have several bamboo thickets , lots of native Indian flowers (in this photo there are matchstick plants and cobra lilies ) along with the vines and several smaller palm type plants will be added.
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Just incredible!

Fantastic Phil, really awesome!