So, MegaMinis actually makes a set of 25mm scaled llamas - a family of 5 ran me $8 USD, and I set out to create a mini-diorama for The Lovely Josie to display on her desktop. The enclosure is a bell dome which I think I sourced from Woodland Scenics. (This project was a non-starter for her last birthday, interrupted by wedding planning, among other things…)
| The Llama Family, primed in Testor’s Aircraft Gray. Not all these guys are going to make the final cut. |  |
| I cut a piece of ¾” (19mm) insulation foam and used a piece of sandpaper on the benchtop to bevel a slope onto its upper surface. This will be the base for the terrain insert. |  |
| Here’s a test fit, with additional foam terrain added and carved a bit. Three llamas is a good number to fit into the dome, although as you’ll see their final arrangement will differ somewhat. |  |
| I wanted Papa Llama to be standing on the crest of the outcropping, which required shifting the alignment of his legs, neck and head. As you can see, these castings are pretty delicate-looking, but I still needed to take a Dremel tool with a cut-off wheel to carve away his base and around his neck & head. |  |
| Here’s Papa, positioned atop his rocky outcropping. You can see the nubs of his base, which will be blended into the terrain with sand and kitty-litter. |  |
| I increased the angle of his neck more sharply, and bent it forward as far as the cut allowed. I also pushed the legs as far back as I felt the metal would allow - I wanted him clearly in a position to watch out over his little group! (Off to the left, you can see Kendra/Josie in the sculpting stand I made - very handy design.) |  |
| Here's Papa, all sculpted and ready to get attached to the base. |  |
| The family group, attached to their terrain base and primed flat black. I layered kitty litter onto the base with watered-down PVA, experiencing some difficulty because all I had was the "clumping" litter. When it gets wet, it sticks to anything nearby, especially the paint-brush I was using to convey the glue-solution. Aagh! Before I attached the llamas themselves to the base, I thickly painted the foam with Ceramacoat acrylic craft paint (Raw Umber) to provide a base coat as well as to protect the foam from the spray primer. I've made that mistake once. |  |
| And here is the group after some paint attention. I'm sorry I didn't get any WIP shots leading up to this point, but I got swept up in the process. The rocky ground got worked over with thin washes of gray and darker gray, some Payne's Gray (a mix of black & ultramarine blue) and thin washes of terra verde to suggest lichen and such. I use mostly Ceramacoat craft paints, with a few colors by Golden, which produces artist's acrylic paints. I did the llamas themselves without my reference photos, so I'll be redoing them shortly. The diorama has been hot-glued to the lid of a jam-jar, for ease of handling. |  |
| Another “beauty shot” of the family. The backdrop is the wonderfully textural (IE, “flaking and nacreous”) brick wall of my basement… |  |
| You’re probably wondering what happened to the 2 llamas who didn’t get included in the diorama. Well, one of them took a wrong turn on the way to the zoological park, and is pictured here surrounded by zombies. Lucky for her, they’re only interested in human brains… |  |
Work on the diorama will continue as time permits – before Christmas, I still need to finish painting The Bride’s yoga room, and sewing a stocking for myself. Hopefully, it will be filled with wonderful things. (I’ve asked Josie for an Optivisor, since my eyes are not what they used to be…)
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