Hello dear friends, enemies and everything else in between. I've recently come across a few dioramas built into a picture frame, and it has since opened a wormhole of inspirational goodness. Given how interesting I have found all of this, I wanted to speak to a few artists behind the creations, and share their knowledge with all of you, so that perhaps you could be the new creator of an awesome miniature diorama set within a frame. Given the nature of having to wait for the respective artists to provide me with their time and words, this subject will be split into a few parts, each part featuring a different artist and perspective, so please be patient!
Now as someone who has never attempted to create one of these frames, I'm not really particularly qualified to talk about them with any useful information for you. Thankfully, a few of these artists have kindly agreed to provide their perspectives and processes with all of us, saving me from drowning you in rambling bull manure, so without further adieu, let's begin!
One of the first 'framed' pieces I came across was courtesy of Jonathan of @wavecolors.tabletopart with his framed diorama, aptly named 'The Last Alliance'. This LOTR piece stunned my poor retinas in awe. Just the nature of cramming all of these miniatures into a picture frame, producing a truly 3D work of art; absolutely blew me away and got those little inspiration alarm bells ringing. This first piece was the catalyst behind me further seeking out more of these framed dioramas, and so I'm very glad I came across it. Let's see what Jonathan has to say for all of us today.
Jonathan from Wavecolors
My first framed Diorama was "The last Alliance". It is a middle earth themed diorama where I wanted to make an art piece to show a very epic scene from The Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring, where the humans and the high elves fight against Sauron in Mordor at the foot of the faid mountain. I had this Diorama in mind years before I started the frame. I had the idea and a clue which miniatures and that I wanted to show a real dynamic fighting scene with a bunch of miniatures going on to really get the epic feeling across. I was struggling how to arrange the scene and especially the miniatures perfectly on a big plinth (which I had already especially for this diorama).
In 2022 I became aware of Roman Lappats first frame diorama piece which is called "Rain of Vengeance". It shows some Black Templars on an epic nice background. When I saw this it was like I have waited for such an incredible inspiring piece and I was sure this is the way to do my "The last Alliance" Diorama.Â
The process of making them is honestly not that easy, because you have to get the right frame for your project, find out good positioning of the miniatures and therefore a composition which works. There are a lot of other aspects which comes together with the basics I have mentioned like for example find out the right depth for your needs and get a good transition between the background and the miniatures. The last point I have mentioned is a big key to achieve a nice looking result in case of a frame diorama. On this piece I had to do a lot of conversions as you can see especially on the miniatures which are thrown away by Sauron him self. Also the painting process was quite intensive, especially because all metal armor parts are painted in non metallic metal and I tried to paint all faces as detailed as possible.Â
If you like to know more of the process it self I can recommend Roman Lappat´s PDF tutorials, where he explains the steps he did on his frames. For me the "Rain of Vengeance" PDF - Tutorial was a reference point to start with my diorama even if I didn´t make everything the same way he did. I will do a youtube video about this piece asap. If you are interested feel free to visit my channel to don't miss this.
My second frame Diorama "Defending the humans" is based on the promotion artwork from Leviathan the 10th edition of warhammer 40k. I saw this great piece of art and loved the colors and the atmosphere which is going on on this painting so much that I thought I have to do a 3d kind of version of this. I think I achieved a lot in my second diorama especially in case of composition, even if the first one took me a lot more hours (but it has more miniatures on it and each of them was more difficult to paint).
If you like to know more about the building of this piece feel free to check out my youtube video about it. At this point there is part 1, which is all about building the scene and the idea behind it. Maybe when reading this part 2, which is all about the painting process, is online already.Â
I hope you liked my explanation about these two artworks I am very proud of :) Feel free to check out my social media channels for more of my work. Happy painting and enjoy the creativity.
Jonathan from WavecolorsÂ
A big thanks to Jonathan for his time, words and pictures. There's nothing better than hearing directly from the artist, which is why I've chosen to mostly leave his words unedited, so please note he has apologised in advance for any literary errors! If he has peaked your interest, then absolutely make sure you go and check out his Instagram to see what he's up to, check out his website and watch his videos for more detail!
Make sure you tune in next time for the next installment, to see which artist will be gracing your eyeballs with their beautiful frames, thoughts and perhaps feelings.
If you have anything you'd like to contribute towards this frame series, please get in touch via plasticpreacher@gmail.com or @plasticpreacher on Instagram.
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