Richard Wagner and James Perry Wilson

The Gorilla diorama had just been finished in 1934. The background was painted by William R. Leigh. James Perry Wilson likely first contemplated what it would take to paint a diorama standing in front of it. (photo courtesy of the ANH Library Services)

In June 1934, when James Perry Wilson walked into the American Museum of Natural History on his first day of work, he was almost 45 years old. He had already had a 20 year career as an architectural draftsman and designer and was fully formed as a mature landscape painter. At the architectural office, he had immersed himself in a high-brow bohemian culture of well-educated, creative thinkers and was, himself also one of them. His plein air painting work increased after he was laid off as an architect in 1932 and especially after he got his foot in the door with a job possibly painting natural history dioramas. From that time on, Wilson was certainly starting to think about how to paint large landscapes on curved backgrounds. He already knew, before he walked into the museum, that there would be a problem with distortion from painting landscapes on a curved surface. And, he knew that correcting it mattered. His immense knowledge of projection perspective used in architectural renderings was an immediate solution to the problem. He came with that idea at the ready. Within six months, Wilson suggested to his mentor, William R. Leigh, that he grid the background to adjust for perspectival distortion. (Painting Actuality, The Diorama Art of James Perry Wilson, p110). It’s astonishing he would suggest it to the artist who had been to Africa with Carl Akeley and had already painted several diorama backgrounds. It points to the confidence he had in the efficacy of his gridding method.

Wilson knew on a cellular level, painting techniques to enhance the illusion of depth, to use transition of color values to achieve a sense of atmospheric perspective. He knew about the transition of color in clouds as they recede into the distance, He had a strong determination to not use black in his palette because of its deadening quality. He had done all this repeatedly in his smaller plein air paintings and knew it would work equally well on a large diorama background.

While James Perry Wilson had studied painting techniques and architectural perspective for his entire adult life, he also had immersed himself in classical music and especially the music and operas of Richard Wagner. There are 20 pages of letters that Wilson wrote to his friend, Thanos Johnson about Wagnerian concerts, recordings, and books. It is clear that Wilson spent much free time listening to Wagner. He told Thanos he owned over 1000 classical music records. He went as far to hand-transcribe five themes from the Ring for Thanos to practice on a recorder that Wilson bought for him. Wilson was a serious student of the piano in his youth and college years. Wilson worked in Bertram Goodhue’s office from 1914 to 1932. Goodhue was producing some of the high visibility neo-Gothic churches in the early 20th century. He was making waves in the architecture world. 

Wagner’s Siegfried’s Love Song transcribed by James Perry Wilson.

He wrote the following to introduce the music:
This theme is often associated with the person of Wotan, as well as with his castle. For instance, in Act I, where Sieglinde tells Siegmund of the strange old man who appeared at her wedding and thrust the sword into the tree, the orchestra swiftly sings “Walhalla,” and we know that the stranger was Wotan himself. I give the theme in its full form, as it appears at its first appearance in “Das Rheingold.” In “Die Walkure” it is usually in a shorter form.
            Then there is “The Sword,” always clean-cut and keen in the brasses:
            Remember how, in Act I, when Siegmund, alone after the exit of Hunding and Sieglinde, apostrophizes his father—“Wake! Wake! Where is thy sword?”—every time the fire on the hearth flares up and shines on the sword-hilt, this theme is heard? Often as I have heard and seen it, it always gives me a thrill.

Bertram Goodhue thought on an expansive scale about church architecture.  He wanted his churches to appear distant in time and place and to excite the imagination by their strange effect. Wagner’s opera was also an important analogy Goodhue used to frame his ideas. The ecstasy of the spirit operating through the medium of beauty, was Goodhue’s ideal in church architecture. Wagner’s large-scale operas are an exploration of the mystery of the breach of the divine into the human. For Goodhue, this experience of the divine as the power that stands behind everything, was not verbal, but visual and aural; its setting was not life, but art. Translated to his churches, Goodhue created settings of stained glass, embroidery, metalwork, sculpture, and painting as one all-encompassing work of art that was truly Wagnerian in its integration of the arts as the visible expression of the religious energy of the church.

Wilson was one of the players in Goodhue’s architectural orchestra creating the material embodiment of this aesthetic thinking. Wilson and Goodhue shared together their love of Wagner and both were accomplished piano players. Wilson and others in the office would have engaged with Bertram Goodhue in conversations that were grounded in the Wagnerian aesthetics of their architectural work.

This is the artistic training and intellectual background James Perry Wilson brought to the American Museum of Natural History in 1934. The Wagnerian narratives were as strongly embedded in Wilson’s mind as were his painting techniques. I believe all aspects had an impact on how Wilson produced and thought about his diorama work.

How could he not use Wagnerian vocabulary to describe what he saw when he first walked in front of those magnificent dioramas? They were large scale, expansive theatrical settings with superbly romantic landscape paintings. Taxidermied, trophy-sized mammals and birds of the jungles, forest and desert cavorted with each other in an environment unspoiled by human presence. The faux habitat looked as alive as if he had walked into it in a dream. Talk about ecstasy! Bertram Goodhue had never been able to pull something like this off in his churches! There was enchantment with no reliance on religious content, just a firm commitment to scientific veracity and to the education of the public.

The multiple complexities of James Perry Wilson’s creations, the projection perspective, a field of view carefully planned to match the field of view in the landscape, his control of values and color to create atmospheric perspective, the grids on his photographic panoramas, the thirteen bands of color to produce luminous skies, his collaboration with foreground artists and the higher hues he painted at the tie-ins to create a seamless “jump” from two dimensions to three. He used the curve of the dome of the diorama to enhance the feeling of a canopy of tree tops, and no black was used in his palette to get the brightest colors. All these techniques were employed together to create the illusion similar to or even beyond the spirit that Goodhue and his fellow architects were trying to imbue in their buildings. This was the level James Perry Wilson was reaching for in the dioramas and a level that he knew was attainable with the knowledge and the tools he had at his disposal. He would go on to create over the next twenty-three years, a realism in the dioramas beyond anything seen before. Much like Wagner’s composition of music, Wilson was putting his orchestra together, a multipart composition, to create a uniquely Wilsonian grand exposition that defined his dioramas.

Wapiti diorama, AMNH (photo courtesy of the AMNH Library Services)

To read more about James Perry Wilson and to see photographs of his dioramas and paintings see:

Painting Actuality, The Diorama Art of James Perry Wilson                 Author, Michael Anderson,Self-published: Bookbaby, 2019

Request to purchase this book can be sent to Michael Anderson at: michael.anderson0203@gmail.comor calling or texting at 203-554-3002

The book is also posted on this blogsite

James Perry Wilson Skies-Thirteen Bands of Color

Grizzly Bear Sky color test strips. I think the middle band is the center section of the background sky and the adjacent bands are the left and right sides. The sketch on the right may be a quick demonstration of reflected light illuminating the underside of the rocks.

The 13 bands of color is James Perry Wilson’s paint mixing technique that perfectly mimics the gradation of light in a sunset or sunrise. It grades the paint from zenith to horizon, dark to light and from cool to warm, just like the actual sky. I think Wilson also grades from light to dark, not just vertically, but horizontally as well. The horizontal gradation gives an indication of the direction of the light. I believe that a horizontal gradation is what the 3 side-by-side bands in the Grizzly Bear color studies were used for.

Grizzly Bear Diorama, AMNH

This is a tightly controlled painting system grounded in James Perry Wilson’s empirical study of light. As far as I know, no other artist had ever used this technique to paint skies and is, 100%, a Wilson innovation. Wilson was criticized by other diorama painting colleagues in the 1930s and 1940’s because he relied on systems that they thought, inherently deadened the spirit of the painting. These systems, his study of how to counteract the curved painting surface, his gridding projection method, his use of photography and the linkage of his camera lens to the viewing distance, his complicated perspective, and his reluctance to change anything in his photographs or field studies indicated to the other painters that he was weak as a painter and that he needed all these “paint-by-number” techniques because he lacked confidence in his painting abilities. They surmised after all, he was trained as an architect and never had any formal art classes. If he had the training, they thought, he would know not to copy his field paintings directly to the diorama. Field paintings were taught to be never enough and were typically combined into a composite painting that is based on the artist’s recollection of the mood of the place. Wilson’s techniques were anathema to the formally trained artists at the museum.

But Wilson got results. His paintings glowed with light; theirs’ looked dull by comparison. His paintings locked into place on the curved backgrounds, nothing distracted from a powerful illusion of standing in the landscape. He didn’t have to devise barriers at the corners of his dioramas with vegetation and rocks to hide these areas plagued by distortion. His clouds laid comfortably in the sky and receded as they do in actuality while other painter’s clouds sometimes raised as if on another plane from problems with distortion. His detractors were savvy artists and had to notice that his esoteric methods were working in ways that their “trained artists’ methods” didn’t succeed. And, Wilson appeared to have no interest in the subjectivity of the artist and the foundational element, the “importance “artistic genius”. I can only assume that there were some dark nights of the soul for the other painters because they made fun of his techniques and even worse, attacked his masculinity!

Diagram for how to mix the thirteen bands of color for his skies.

Francis Lee Jaques criticized all these aspects of Wilson’s painting:

He painted many backgrounds for the Museum which were very popular; they were really, in effect, giant kodachromes.  On the expedition for source material, he made detailed sketches and [took] many kodachromes and was usually accompanied by Don Carter.  This might take months.  He never changed anything on his backgrounds which were exactly as it was when he saw it. 

The accusation that Wilson never changed anything has two aspects. One, that he relied wholly on photography and two, that he didn’t have strong compositional skills. The artistic standards of the time were that all artists of any merit knew that the composition could be enhanced by making changes to the landscape. Rather than make changes from his reference paintings and photographs, instead, Wilson took great pains to find points of views in the landscape that he knew would “resonate” within the diorama background without his changes. Wilson, while secure in his painting abilities, developed a more humble method of depicting the landscape where he didn’t noticeably “insert himself” into the finished work.

Wilson was indeed a slow painter and, at the end of his career at the AMNH, he was sidelined from the bigger dioramas for this reason. While true, this is not relevant in the discussion of how he achieved the best results on a painted diorama background. As for the color bands that Wilson meticulously blended together into his skies, the method was unequivocally a flawless way to create the most realistic rendition of how blue sky actually looks. When Wilson uses this technique in his dioramas or his plein air paintings, he achieved a luminous quality to the sky that animates the background with light. With little to criticize on this main point, Jaques instead points out the time factor needed to get the results.

It may be worth hearing from Jaques again on how he painted skies:

With my method I could only go from light to a darker shade, thus mix enough of the lightest shade to cover the whole sky, which is usually the horizon, and add thin darker color as you go up.  That is for instance, color from the tube mixed thin to a liquid.  This adds very little to the volume of paint and you come out even. 

Wilson used every practical technique he could use to wrest out the most realistic, dramatic presentation on a diorama background painting that he could. He didn’t criticize or argue with other diorama painters about their techniques. And he never seemed to be ruffled by the personal attacks. To him, the question was, if the techniques are effective, why shouldn’t they be used? His sky painting technique animates the sky with light. These are skies that give a feeling of great space. They enhance the depth in the diorama and a luminous sky works together with his projection geometry to counteract the physical curve of the diorama background wall. There is a feeling that the background is translucent and light shines from behind the painted background itself. No black paint was ever used to deaden the illusion. This is what I think Wilson means by his statement: “I am creating an abstract mood through realistic presentation”.

Ostrich Wart Hog diorama, African Hall, AMNH

There are other dioramas that are located next to Wilson’s dioramas whose skies look monochromatic next to his. One example is Francis Lee Jaques’ South African Oryx diorama in the balcony of the African Hall at the AMNH. Directly adjacent to it is the Warthog Ostrich diorama by Wilson. The viewer can see how color is used in Wilson’s sky and clouds to create a sense of atmospheric depth. Jaques’ sky transitions only from a light blue to a darker blue overhead. Jaques also uses black in his paint mixtures. There is a dullness to the sky, less sense of light and less sense of depth. The sky hugs the curve of the diorama shell.

The amount of time it took to paint his backgrounds indicates how much James Perry Wilson was invested in making the best illusion of standing in front of the landscape. He worked uncompromisingly to try to recreate the light in the sky because that is where the life or spirit of the landscape resides. The geometry he used to project his photographs or painted references was used because it worked best to create a seamless illusion of space without uncomfortable, space-destroying distortions. Wilson created a new level of realism in diorama painting that inherently makes comparison with other diorama painters an “apples and oranges” exercise.

To read more about James Perry Wilson and to see photographs of his dioramas and paintings see:

Painting Actuality, The Diorama Art of James Perry Wilson                 Author, Michael Anderson,Self-published: Bookbaby, 2019

Request to purchase this book can be sent to Michael Anderson at: michael.anderson0203@gmail.comor calling or texting at 203-554-3002

The book is also posted on this blogsite

Installation!

Wednesday I spent most of the day installing the birds in the diorama.  I was able to place seven warblers, two quail, one Fowler’s toad, and a hognose snake.  The quail, toad, and snake have all been extirpated from Point Pelee.  Greg Watkins Colwell, Peabody’s herpetology collections manager, suggested that pesticides wiped out the Fowler’s toad which left the hognose snake without a food source and the quail were hunted out of existence either by humans or possibly, cats.  We will create signage for the diorama that will tell this all-too-common story.  This diorama will then have an additional purpose to teach about habitat destruction and human impact on environments.  I am letting the dust settle for the day and Thursday, I will paint out repairs and we will install the glass viewing window.  Rick Prum and Kristof Zyskowski will have to critique the final installation and if there are any changes, I will make them at that time.  Dorie Petrochko wants to come back and paint a bit more on some of her birds.  here are the photos:

Installing a black-throated blue warbler model. I find that the bird carvings work better when they are not directly visible. In this case I have positioned the model behind a Solomon Seal wildflower.

Installing the prairie warbler model. I had to splice the branch on the larger branch using insect pins and epoxy putty.

Black-throated blue warbler model and taxidermied quail.

Fowler's toad by the late Dave Parsons. This model was cast in latex rubber directly from a specimen and painted with oil paint

Nashville warbler model on an aluminum wire with a grass stem glued over it.

Almost finished diorama without the glass.

Acknowledgements:

Rick Prum, Ornithologist, Yale Peabody Museum

Kritof Zyskowski, Ornithology collections manager, Yale Peabody Museum

Jane Pickering, Assistant Director, Yale Peabody Museum

Walter Brenckle and John  construction shop, Yale Peabody Museum

Dorie Petrochko, painted bird carvings (Black-throated Blue Warbler, Prairie Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Connecticut Warbler)

Jill Heathman, painted bird carvings (Nashville Warbler)

The late Dave Parsons, taxidermist, Yale Peabody Museum (Yellow-breasted Chat, Hognose Snake, Fowler’s Toad)

Alexis Brown, painted the juniper needles and stems

Patrick Sweeney, Collections Manager, Botany, Yale Peabody Museum helped identify and locate trees, juniper and grasses.  Patrick also helped finding the dried specimens

Michael Bobbie, help constructing the foreground

My wife and kids for help collecting sand

Point Pelee-Really!

I was at Point Pelee from Tuesday May 25^th to Friday the 28^th.  My family came with me and we arrived  late in the afternoon, too tired to go to the park.  Early Wednesday morning though, we were in the park by 7am.  The big bird migration push was already past so we were the only ones at the point that early.  We rode our bikes down to the tip where I figured the diorama site was located.  As we walked around,  all I could find that was familiar was the stellated false solomon seal and the hoptree.  I began to worry that the hairy pucoon was gone or past bloom.  Where was the juniper?  None of the landscape looked right and I thought because of the smell that we were in a heron rookery.  We discovered it was actually thousands of small fish (smelt) washed up on the shore.  We learned that the fish die naturally after spawning and normally sink to the bottom of the lake.  This year, a storm came through and washed the fish onshore.  It was headline news in Pelee.  My wife and I birded the point.  Most common birds were: kingbirds, cedar waxwings, yellow warbler, indigo buntings, both Baltimore and orchard orioles, brown thrasher, and barn swallows.

We left there and went to an area called West Beach.  The kids ran to the lakeside and looked for interesting things on the beach.  Finn found fossilized shells and corals.  We looked up fossils at Point Pelee and discovered that there are many fossilized invertebrates and coral from the Devonian since the area was an inland ocean.  While they played on the beach, I went poking around in the dunes behind the beach and I was relieved to find the hairy pucoon in good numbers.  They were in full bloom so I got good photos.  I even found one stellated solomon seal in bloom (they were past bloom) so I took more photos.

Hairy Pucoon

Stellated False Solomon Seal

Encountering the real flowers was humbling.  The hairy pucoon flowers were smaller than I have made mine and the depth of the base of the flower was deeper.  The sepals only come up half way on the actual flower (my wax ones went all the way to the petals)  Also, the petals are joined together for half their length and are much more convoluted than I have made mine.  Back to the drawing board!  The “hair” of the hairy pucoon is beautiful and has a very regular pattern.  I can’t imagine how I might get that effect.  The solomon seal leaves are ribbed more than I made them and glow with intrinsic coloration.  I will have to try Gary Hoyle’s recipe of hot melt glue and parrafin to make leaves.

While still in CT, I made an appointment with Sarah Rupert, a park ranger, to show me around and I met her at the nature center at 10 am.  She printed out a photo of the diorama and said that the area looked like the northwestern beach area.  Another ranger, John, was listening in and offered to take us up there.  John knew more about plants than Sarah (she is a bird person), so it was decided he would give us a tour of the northwest beach.

When we got there we walked out over an old parking lot that the park was letting grow over.  We continued south to an area that was close to what was painted in the diorama, but I told John that there was nowhere I could see that had all the elements, the dunes, the juniper, the canadian wild rye grass, the flowers, the hoptree.  There was a lot of each in various places, but nothing struck me as the site.  John was interested in trying to find the Canadian wild rye, so we looked and found it in the area quite close to the beach/high tide mark.  I looked for it in other places, but the beach region was the only area it was found.  This is too bad since all the grasses I had put in the midground of the diorama were C. wild rye.  The grasses I did find in the mid-region were switchgrass and a common-looking grass with a conspicuous seedhead (I’ll have Patrick Sweeney ID it).  I will be removing the grasses from the foreground and collecting the other grasses in CT to replace them.

Northwest Beach-Point Pelee

My sense from this photo is that this is probably the site, but the photo was taken standing much closer to the beach than Wilson did back in 1964.  In fact, about 40′ behind me there was a high vantage point that very well might have been the point at which Wilson made his studies.  The large deciduous trees that show in the diorama to the right, now covered the entire area.  Plant succession had made it virtually inaccessable.  What was left of the juniper in this area was dead.  There were tangles of low vegetation barring easy access and I wasn’t convinced that a photo taken from that point would reveal anything, so I didn’t choose to explore it.  John showed us several other plants common to the area: Goat’s beard, sweet clover, rock sand wort, wormwood, and prickly pear.  He told me that the hognose snake was long gone as was the Fowler’s toad that it fed on, victims of habitat destruction.  Removing the hognose snake is yet another change I will make.  He said that the 5 lined skink was a much more representative reptile.  Insects were also discussed and these are his suggestions: Red Admiral and American Lady butterflies, the robber fly, and the ant lion whose inverted sandy cones were evident everywhere.  In the original diorama there were a pair of bobwhite.  I noticed on the Point Pelee bird list that bobwhite was listed as “extripated”.  A discussion will ensue when I get back to Peabody about whether we go ahead and put the bobwhite, hognose snake, and fowler’s toad in the diorama and install signage about the human impact on this habitat.  Otherwise, none of these should go in the foreground.

This visit did nothing short of impell me to change the entire foreground.  Well, maybe not the entire foreground, but significant parts of it.  Constructing/installing the foreground to a James Perry Wilson diorama charges me to strive for a high level of accuracy.  So, I need to resculpt and cast new hairy pucoon flowers, experiment with the hot melt glue/parrifin mixture for new leaves, remake the stems of both flowers, and change out the grasses.  I think Wilson would not only approve, he would insist on it!

Done With the Dunes (for now)

Point Pelee Foreground at the time of the exhibit closing.

Today was my last day “on exhibit”.  It was quite eventful because I had a visit from Harry McChesney who painted dioramas at the NY State Museum in Albany.  Harry is the only diorama painter other than Sean Murtha who has ever tried out JP Wilson’s gridding ideas.  He gave me a copy of his grid drawings for the Mastodon diorama many years ago.  They are unlike anything I’ve seen of Wilson’s, but they clearly grid the background the same way.  I have been interested in these drawings because in many cases, Wilson would produce his grids on paper.  He was absolutely conversant in architectural methods using plans and elevations on an architect’s drawing table to find the measurements and bring them to the museum.

Harry told me that he started this diorama in 1973 and wanted to grid it because the background was an irregular curve.  He produced the drawings and was ready to start, but the administration thought he was taking too long, so they hired Jan Vriessen from Canada to paint the background.  Vriessen projected slides onto the background and painted what was projected.  Harry assisted Vriessen.  How many things are wrong with this picture!  I’ll ask my friend Nat Chard to submit something to the blog about why projecting slides is a bad idea.  Harry said if Wilson were there he would have walked off the job.

Close up from today April 24, 2010

On Monday, the diorama (with it’s new foreground) will be wrapped in plastic and a wall built around it right in the exhibit gallery.  It will “sleep” behind the wall while the next exhibit is running.  After that exhibit closes in three months, the construction shop will have time to build the presentation case for the diorama.  It will include a 54″X54″ window on a slant and a light box on top.  Then it will be installed permanently in the CT. Bird Hall.  During the next 3-4 months while the diorama is walled up, I will work on the taxidermy mounts and the plants to get them ready for installation-in the prep lab down in the basement of the Peabody.  It was great to be “on display” and I met a lot of interesting people and some awesome kids, but I am ready to not have to be “ON” all the time and work quietly by myself or with my volunteers in my shop.  Look for the diorama in the Bird Hall this fall.

Leafmaking from a Master

Gary Hoyle is one of those artist/museum preparators that everyone in my job likes to have in their rollodex (I still use one!)  Gary worked for 28 years at the Maine State Museum in Augusta, ME and he worked together with another museum talent, Fred Scherer.  Fred worked at the American Museum of Natural History for 30 years before moving to Maine to live a more sedate life.  Fred learned all aspects of diorama-making at the AMNH, including background painting with James Perry Wilson.  While in Maine, Fred worked at the Maine State Museum, producing exhibits.  Gary couldn’t have had a better mentor than Fred to work alongside at the Me State Museum.

Wax plants by Gary Hoyle

Gary responded to an earlier plea of mine to find a way to make translucent leaves for the diorama.  With his approval, I am copying our conversation:

Good Morning, Michael.

From what I’ve just read on your blog, it looks like you’ve had some very challenging weeks.  But it looks like you’ve met the challenge well and probably learned a lot in the process.  One thing I’d suggest, if you haven’t done so, is to install lighting, if not permanently, at least a temporary system that mimics the final result.  Otherwise you are working against too many variables.  Fred Scherer, who I worked with for many years and who also worked with Wilson, always specified the need to work under the permanent lighting.  He told me that he and Wilson always began their paintings after the permanent lighting was in place [ I’m sure some “tweaking” had to be done at the final installation].  He also stressed that the illusion of a diorama could easily be dispelled by not establishing the horizon at eye level.  He and Wilson use to measure willing museum visitors in order to determine an average eye level horizon line.

As far as artificial plants are concerned, I haven’t gone back onto the final phase of the fossil construction.  That will be later this spring.  However, the test runs have ironed out some bugs.  I’ve found that by scoring hot press watercolor paper at weights of 140lbs or greater, I can mimic venation and create an acceptable thickness to the leaf.  Sealing the paper with a spray fixative causes some swelling and very fine sandpaper is needed to remove proud fibers and reduce gloss if necessary.  Two piece plaster molds can then be made, after which a casting material can be used to create the leaves.  Previously I used the traditional wax method with colored beeswax and cotton, but I’ve started playing with a 50% mix of hot melt glue and paraffin wax.  The hot melt reduces the brittleness of the wax while the paraffin’s “greasy” quality helps prevent mold lock during de-molding.  I also found that mixing oil paints with poppyseed oil rather than other traditional media worked well to incorporate pigment into the glue/wax mix.

To attach your flowers to stems, you really need a magnifier stand with a built in light to keep your hands free and prevent headaches from the visor type magnifiers.  You also need to work with a pin vise.  Over the years I’ve worked on many complex plant “problems” with beeswax, cotton and various size steel wires and my trusty pin vise.  It’s always a challenge but sometimes the results are spot on [see attachment].  I’ve always used flock for my “fuzzy” plants, most often beige or white.  I’ve never tried static charge, though I’ve thought about it at times.  Please let me know how it works for you.  Remember that a layer of glass will separate the visitor from the foreground, so some details aren’t necessary even at rather close distances.

With kind regards,

Gary

Hi Michael,

I could not respond to you yesterday because of finish carpentry issues.  Before I answer your questions, let me suggest an experiment that I haven’t tried as yet.  Take some white crepe paper and cut out paper petals [be sure that the grain of the paper is aligned with the long axis of the petals].  Then on a warm piece of metal heated by a hot-plate [the metal should be just above the melting temperature of the glue/wax mix] place a few “crumbs” of your colored glue/wax mix.  Place your paper petals over the melted glue/wax to absorb the mixture, then use a warmed spatula to press the paper slightly.  Lift the base of the petals with forceps.  When cooled slightly use a rounded metal tool, like a large stylus [I’ve used various size ball bearings affixed to steel handles]. to shape the petal in the palm of you hand.  I’ve used this technique several times with colored beeswax.  The beauty of it is that you can create three-dimensional petals, and if the wax is not too opaque, the crepe ribs look like venation.  I’ve done this quite effectively with violets [sorry that I have no photos of those].  The unknown in all this is the behavior of the glue/wax mix.  Give it a try and please let me know your results.

In regard to the use wire, I always begin assembling a flower from the inside out.  Here’s where good old sun-bleached beeswax shines.  First I select a wire that is strong enough to support the weight of wax, etc..  It should also be small in diameter [try this and you’ll get a feel for the size wire that you need].  I then straighten the wire by stretching it in a vice.  Next, I cut the wire into appropriate flower-stem lengths plus a couple inches.  I pull the wires through a fold of 100 grit sandpaper to roughen their surface then insert a wire into a pin vice and crimp the tip of the wire into a tiny hook.  I twirl the pin vice and spin a thin layer of cotton evenly down the “flower stem.”  I then tighten the cotton by taking a small piece of sand paper and folding it so that the abrasive side is facing out.  As I twirl the cotton again I lightly compress it in the paper fold.  The result is a smooth cylinder of cotton with a wire core and a little bud of cotton at its tip.  Using a wax tool I heat a few crumbs of colored wax over an alcohol lamp [slow but effective] or a propane burner [fast but can char wax quickly], I then run the liquid wax with one stroke down the cotton cylinder.  When the wax cools I twirl the cotton wax cylinder through a fold of sand paper, this time with the grit side in the fold.  This removes the little bumps.  Then I run one or more finish coats of wax down the cylinder and check for thickness with calipers.

The little ball of wax at the tip of the cylinder becomes the heart of the flower.  I usually start at this point and then do the above stem work later.  I attach, or create from wax, the central elements of the flower then attach the petals with a heated wire.  If the flower is in a cluster of stems, I carefully grind the end of the raw wire so that one side is flat.  I then can attach two flower stems to a more robust wire with solder [ here wet cotton is necessary at the wax cylinder base to prevent melting].  Of course, as you know, flock, spines, etc. are applied later.

I do not know of a source of 1/8 inch flock and I’m not familiar with the plant that you’re working on, but your idea of fiberglass may yet work.  With fine forceps you may be able to insert the fibers into a wax stem.  If the stem is warmed in water and the glass fibers heated, you may be able to place them just where you want.  Obviously this is labor intensive work……………..

With kindest regards,

Gary

GO DORIE!

Dorie Petrochko and the yellow warbler

Dorie Petrochko is raising the bar with painting the bird carving casts.  Yesterday she added just a bit more color to the wings so that a slight bit of yellow shows on each folded primary feather.  It looked like she was using a “00” brush.  Later, she felt finished enough with the painting to start glueing a few feathers on.  I told her that this model is so well painted that only a very few feathers would be needed to enhance what is already there.  We have been debating whether the duller birds come across better in the models.  I am wondering if the bird’s plumage is lighter and with less contrasts, it inherently looks softer.  This hypothesis will be tested because Dorie plans to paint a male Canada warbler next which is anything but dull or without contrasts!!

a skin and the painted model

By the way, Dorie is starting a natural science/scientific art school with two other scientific illustrators this fall.  This is very exciting to see this starting in New Haven.  Here is what she wrote me about it:

The CT School of Natural Science Illustration at Yale-Peabody West Campus will be launched this September. The classes will be held at the new Community Education Center at West Campus.  The schedule will be listed on the Peabody Museum website under West Campus Programs/ Education.  It will also be listed in the Peabody Explorer for next fall.  In September we will be offering classes in Fundamentals of Natural Science Illustration, Botanical Illustration in Watercolor, Drawing Butterflies in Colored Pencil, Drawing from Museum Specimens, Field Sketching and Natural Science Illustration in Pen and Ink.

New Foreground Material

Wax flowers and epoxy leaves make up the Hairy Pucoon model

Work has continued to progress even though I haven’t had time to keep the blog up to date.  I have been working on the Hairy Pucoon model and have gotten one sprig finished far enough so it only needs some wax work, a final light painting, and hair!  I would like to finish two more sprigs so I can paint them all at once.  The leaves are cast in epoxy mixed with a small amount of green oil paint.  Wires are glued to the back and they are  inserted onto a wire “stem” using plastic tubing.  All the leaves are finished with green wax to bring it up to a high level of finish.  The flowers and sepals are made with wax, very carefully put on wire and inserted at the top.  They are quite fragile.  After I get to applying the final layer of paint, I will cover the leaves and stem with matte medium and blow a finely chopped fiberglas over it to simulate the hair that covers the actual wildflower.

The model in the foreground. Note the space between the foreground and background.

I have added more plaster to the dunes to soften the contour, but I think I am closing in on the final look of the dune.  Note that there is a space of approx 1″ between the foreground and the background so no shadows are cast at that junction.  This was a trick developed in the early 1900’s by diorama artists at the American Museum in New York.  Any shadows cast on the background painting kill the illusion of three dimensionality.  Lighting has yet to be put into the Point Pelee diorama, so you will still see all kinds of shadows at this time.

Dune contour change III

Finn mixing plaster. Blue insulation foam used to build up low areas.

I work in fits and starts.  I mentioned in an earlier blog that my sculptor friend Bob Taplin visited me last Saturday and thought I should frame the viewing window so I can see what will be seen and from what vantage.  I had the Peabody construction shop build the frame and they came down and installed it on Weds.  I could immediately see that my dune contours were off.  The high point on the right was too high and the low gully through the middle was too low.  So Thursday, I knew I had to re-do it, but I sulked around hoping I could find a way not to have to re-do it and I worked on the wildflowers instead.   On Friday I had to face the inevitable and I started to tear the foreground down so I could make a new one.  I pulled out a clump of grass, removed the juniper and got my sawzall out.  I carved away from the top of the high area and built up the low areas with blue insulation foam.  This morning everything was ready and my son, Finn and I got in early and plastered up a new dune.

Finn smooths plaster. (Note how the gloves from the first photo have disappeared)

Changes

Less than a week ago I blogged about how quickly the foreground was moving along…This Tuesday, Patrick Sweeney, from the Peabody herbarium, came down to look at how I had placed the grasses and he pointed out a problem that I think I didn’t want to see.  He said that the grasses in the foreground were twice the size of the painted grasses and he thought the tie-in was not convincing for this reason.  My talented volunteer, Michael Bobbie was listening and he agreed.  Patrick and Michael suggested that maybe the perspective was from a high dune looking down.   After discussing it further, I decided to try out the high dune effect.  Michael and I pulled the foreground away from the background and I removed all the grasses and the juniper I had installed earlier.  Then we got some blue insulation foam and cut out some contours that looked like they might work as a form for the higher dune.  We put the foam right on top of the old dune, mixed plaster again, dipped sisal into the plaster again, and covered the substructure AGAIN.  By the end of the afternoon we had the plaster painted and covered with sand blending in with last week’s work.

I needed a day on Wednesday to look at it and react to the change.  I decided it was good, so today I began adding grass, but not in the place where it had been.  This time I focused on the painted clump to the left.

New grass

Then right at the end of the day, I decided to get more juniper and install that on the far right hand side.  All of juniper is still in the freezer, so I had to retrieve a piece and bring it up to the diorama.  It is unpainted, but as you may remember from an earlier blog, it has already been sprayed with latex rubber to hold the needles in place.  With a cut here and a drill hole there, I installed the new, dull-looking juniper branch and reinstalled the other branches.  It is easily removed for painting.  I think Alexis, another talented volunteer, is going to have to paint some more juniper!

Newly installed juniper branch.

I think this is looking hopeful.  If I put grass in this area to the right it will be away from the background and closer to the front.  We’ll try that and see if it works visually.  Nothing is sacred.  I will keep changing things until you can hear the warblers sing!!!.