The Alaskan Brown Bear diorama is basically done. The bears have been re-colored, the tie-in with the crowberry ground cover is complete, the Collared Lemming has some more color in it’s fur (and a pink nose, which is hard to see from the front of the diorama), and the Golden Crowned Sparrow has flesh color on it’s legs. I just have to add gloss to the noses of the bears (I think AMNH used B-72 for gloss) and we will be ready to close it up.

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.

 

Taken from the following blog: Museum Model Making at Yale Peabody