I love adding small details to my dioramas. I often get distracted and spend hours, even days, on tiny details that only the most observant of views will notice.
I once caught myself placing individual roots of a dead tree. This wasn’t a problem apart from the fact that these roots would be subsequently covered by a bush, no one would ever see them.
But a scene just doesn’t feel right to me if it doesn’t have these details.
One such detail is small animals.
If you look carefully, you can often find them around my dioramas. A cat sitting on barrel or a dog patiently waiting for its own to return.
And in some dioramas, the entire story of the scene is based around them.
Pigeons
In the past, I’d make moulds for these animals but more recently things have got a lot easier with the advent of 3D printing. After a few hours of painting, I can have 10 or 20 tiny creatures ready placement.
Of course, the painting remains the hardest part.
Take the pigeons seen in the photo at the top of the page.
Luckily, we have several pigeons visiting our garden at the moment and I got lots of close-up reference photos to work from. A dark grey-blue base paint is applied first. Next, using a digital microscope to aid my eyes, the cere – the soft fleshy bit at the base of the beak – and the outline of the eyes and feet are painted in their respective colours.
Once these detail areas are painted, a light grey acrylic is used for the wings and a dark grey for the beak. When the paint on the wings dries, I drag the tips of an OOO size brush over the surface, front to rear, to create a feather pattern.
The eyes are the hardest bit. After experimenting with various techniques, I now use the tip of a sewing needle. The point has been filled down to a round point and I dip this into the paint and then very, very, slowly dab the paint at the centre of the eye.
Once finished, they go on the diorama or mini-scene.