Palm Sunday Diorama Finished

I fitted the frame, borders and glass cover over the diorama and placed it in my sitting room, lit at night.

Palm Sunday Diorama 8

Following a short holiday, I went back to work on this diorama. Without realising it, I have almost completed it without taking photos of work in progress.

After the main temple and Antonia fortress building shapes were elevated, I added small cutouts to represent other buildings in the background. Small cutouts were also used to represent the walls curving behind the temple gate, most of which are obscured by the trees.

The final painting was carried out, first on the sky. The hills and groundwork were painted a lighter yellow ochre and the buildings were painted, including more buildings in the background.

The figures were staged and then added to the scene. When I framed the scene, I noticed that it was too low and I inserted a thick cardboard underneath to increase the height.

 I divided the crowd scene into two sections to make it interesting. On the right, there is a Sunday market scene outside the walls. Roman guards are posted all around to keep the peace. On the left, there is a group gathered around the procession when Jesus enters with his disciples. 

 Close up of the market section. The Roman centurion on duty is perplexed by the excitement of the crowd rushing off to see the procession. Notice the impasto effect of painting which suggests crumbling brick walls.

 Close-up of the procession. Jesus and his disciples are greeted by crowds waving palm leaves.

 Close-up of the upper gate and background. An enthusiastic follower has climbed up on the walls to show his support. Some of the cutouts and painted buildings can be seen to make a transition into the distance. I used an impressionist style to suggest the buildings.

I painted in some clouds to make the scene more dramatic and to cover up the shadow of the over-painted hill in the background.

When I tested the lights, the LED was too dim for such a bright sunny day and I substituted this with a fluorescent light.

Highlights were added to the trees. Green was added to suggest olive trees in the painting as well. More prominent shading was added to the figures to blend them into the scene. 

Macau Museum Dioramas 3

These were the rest of the dioramas.

This piece was are probably the best of the dioramas with great looking buildings,backgrounds and ships. The figures were also better modelled and the scene was well-composed.A port scene with simple perspectives.

 A close up.

 Another close-up.

 Another close-up.

 Another table-top display, with background painting on two sides. Great paintng but marred by the obvious vertical edge.

 Close-up

 Final diorama showing wedding scene. A wedding scene seems to be "de-rigeur" for any Chinese display on culture or costumes.

 Close-up

 Close-up

Close-up.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures. I posted them here as they were dioramas and fitted in with my thematic goal of dioramic pursuits.

Macau Museum dioramas 2

These next three dioramaswere tabletop displays. They were about waist high and covered with thick glass walls. They may be viewed from all round.

These were more architectural in concept, focusing on the buildings and there were no perspectives. As dioramas, they were mildly interesting but not captivating to me. The buildings were well made, and very neat - (too neat).

 This diorama showed a government building.  The figures were added to give a size context to the building.

Another view of the building. The figures were just standing around.

 The figures appeared to be a mix of commissioned and commercial (K&C?) pieces repainted in a matt finish. Coolies, working class and the lady in a rickshaw suggested a broad time period, from the Qing period.

 Female servants. There was too much wasted space or insufficient figures.

 A Qing Dynasty official procession

Close-up of the figures. Manchu officials. These figures appeared too stumpy.

 A diorama which showed gunpowder manufacturing within a factory compound. The well-painted flat painted background was only done for one side.

A close-up of part of the diorama.

Hong Kong and Macau Museum dioramas

I just came back from a short holiday to HK and Macau. I visited a couple of museums, one in HK and the other in Macau. The HK museum has a very interesting temporary exhibition of artefacts loaned from the Russian Summer Palace in St Petersburg. Really impressive works of art. Past exhibitions from this museum really looked interesting. There was a substantial bookshop too but the books were just too hefty to cart back.

http://hk.history.museum/en_US/web/mh/exhibition/current.html


Then there is the Macau museum. This was located within the old Portuguese fortress on top of a hill and it was very well-done. Besides various ongoing exhibitions which include recent archaeological digs from the Bronze age onwards, there were some nice dioramas for which photography was allowed. These were a mixture of tabletop and shadowbox dioramas. All showed scenes taken from Macau's past. I will show each in chronological order.

The first diorama shows Macau around the Bronze age. Nicely painted background but the background was not curved upwards from the horizon. Similarly the top of the background was flat. Thus the perspective was marred by these perpendicular edges. 

The scene was also generic, not much going on except sitting around breaking stones? I think that more could be done to improve the transition from foreground to midground.

This diorama was more interesting, showing the development of a fishing community. The background painting and the buildings were very well made. the sea was resin poured over the base, quite nicely done.

This  showed the Portuguese making their first foray into Macau. The Chinese officials wore Ming costumes so the period appeared about right. The scene was marred by rather awkward perspectives. It was not helped by the perpendicular horizon edge either. The fully 3-dimensional ships looked rather distorted in the background.
I think that those figures should have been doing something and interacting, rather than stand around and stare at each other.