Re-colored Mule Deer mounts
Tie in with newly re-colored crowberry ground cover. The Collared Lemming is in the crowberry and the Golden-crowned Sparrow is up on it’s perch.
I moved over to the Mule Deer diorama and installed the plank. I decided that I could get away with placing ethafoam “mats” down on the sandy foreground to be able to walk in to paint the taxidermy mounts. I brought in a study skin of a mule deer to use for color. It is quite ruddy and I used it to some extent to re-color the mounts. The juvenile was re-colored with the most ruddy coloration, the female has some ruddy tinges with dark brown over-sprayed to soften the reddish color. The male was re-colored mostly with dark brown and black in contrast to the female and juvenile color.
There is not much more to do in this diorama now before we close it up. I asked Collin to 3D scan the Great Plains Skink before we close it up. The skink is an actual skin and is very fragile from significant insect damage. It may be best, rather than re-install the fragile specimen, to print and paint a new skink to install in the diorama.