Family Hobby time, A Woodland Indians Diorama

Here's something new , and something I hope to post more of here. My 9 year old daughter was assigned a project in her 3rd grade Social Studies class on the Native American tribes of this area. I'm not sure who was more excited when she came home with this one, Her because she knew she would be able to come up with something cool because of my hobby, Or myself because I got to help my daughter do something like this. I told her right off the bat," I will tell you/ show what to do and I will handle the sharp cutting but you need to do this all yourself. "

She's been painting miniatures with me on and off for a good three years now, so she can and has good enough control to neatly paint 3 colors and throw a wash on..and that's all that's done here, we did some practice washes on some other figures to practice putting the right amount where, but that was it, I'm surprised how good they actually came out

The Canoe is just some cereal box cut out with the ends glued with some greenstuff on the sides, we then set it right in liquid resin and painted the bottom brown.

We had to dig thru the lead pile to find suitable figures, we had talked about getting some of Warlord's very cool plastic Woodland Indians how she was assigned this project on Thursday and it was due the following Wednesday not alot of time for ordering stuff, We ended up using all miniatures from Black Cat Bases from my Pirate box,, the Indians I think are supposed to be Pacific Islanders but painted up they'll pass,. The Explorers, are Pirate models the Donkey an old Citadel model.


The biggest hurdle were the scenic element since that was all new to her.  We are using pre existing trees from the terrain box, but everything  else had to be done from scratch. after finding a box, and carving out the pink foam we went thru gluing, sand , then painting (She learned how to use a airbrush for basecoating here as well. )  and flocking. For the background mural, I original had her draw up a background she liked but she had problems getting the scale and perspective right and it was taking way too much time and becoming frustrating for her, instead of  nixing it , I gave in and  I drew out the background mural with a heavy pencil for her and she did the color by numbers bit there.

The wigwam is half a lemon storage container covered with  rough layers of super sculpty with some bamboo sticks stuck on for supports its then painted 3 shades of brown to represent the animal skins.  We rolled  green stuff into tiny ears of corn and put in the Hirst Arts pot to go with the basket of fruit and grain sack piece that just again 3 colors and washed. The tools are various bits from the weapon box on some plastic mesh that supposed to be a net.

The biggest issue we had was pouring a 2 part epoxy resin as we spent time airbrushing  the river section to pour some clear resin for water..I didnt want her getting any where near that stuff so I did myself after she went to bed and somewhere along the way dear old dad screwed up, I either used too much hardener or the pour was just too deep for one pass...even thou I mixed it very thoroughly and it looked amazing when poured I could tell some was wrong right away as it was hardening too quickly and became so cloudly I couldnt stir the air bubbles out. in the morning it was rock hard and anything but clear, so we had to just paint it blue and go with it.

Overall despite my screw up with the water effects, this was a fun (thou long) father /daughter project and a great learning project for her, Her teacher was very impressed and easily hit all the milestones to receive full credit . She's already excited for the next one, not sure what its going to be, but maybe I'll have reason to pick up those Egyptian Hirst Molds Ive been telling myself  I dont need for years.