Catherwood and Stephens discover Labna

[entrauner]

[Graeme]

Use the screen zoom on this one chaps, it just keeps getting better.

Wonderful!

Beautifully modelled buildings, the vegetation is excellent, seamless transition between foreground and background and great flesh tones. There are obviously some clever conversions here because I don't know of any figures that come out of the box looking like this and the poses are great, lots of activity creating a very dynamic scene.

Can't recall hearing of this event before so I really did share in the thrill of discovery.

[C M Dodson]

Another display of genius. Brilliant.

Chris

[Susofrick]

Typical Träuner! Amazing and astonishing at the same time! And I agree totally with Graeme and Chris!

[Kekso]

Stunning work ... and only 1 photo

[Kostis Ornerakis]

Superb diorama!!

[ADM]

Magnificent scene, more photos and more closer view !

[DickerThomas]

Great work

[Peter]

Erik, you hear them shouting: "More pictures please!"

Wonderfull work again with lots of details! Did I say that we want more pictures?

[Alex]

Great, Erik!
Again photographic quality! Again, this is a story, have stood for a moment!
And guys are right - you want the photos.

[dykio]

Erik, you really are my all time number one dio maker
Every detail, the lay out, the subject , all is just perfect, brilliant.
Thank you for sharing this with us !!!

[Cryns]

Dear Entrauner,

Thank you so much for posting this new masterpiece.

For anyone who is interested:

Catherwood and Stephens discovered the Mayan town of Labna, Mexico, in 1842.
They published several books of their journeys, illustrated by Catherwood himself. These books became bestsellers in their times.



Clearly Entrauner is inspirited by this picture made by Catherwood.

There are obviously some clever conversions here because I don't know of any figures that come out of the box looking like this

So let me tell what I see: Different Egyptians from the 1970's Atlantic Pharao's Court set and sling men from Caesar Trojan army converted to local assistants of the expedition. All of this is done in an excellent way (as usual )

Wonderful work on the trees too: I see natural roots and branches used as trunks, roots and liana's. The foliage must be polyester fibre and Noch leaves. The combination of these is of a high quality hardly ever seen by me before, except from Entrauners other work.

What catches the eye is the projecting wall at the right: on the original picture it has clearly a 90 degree angle, but Entrauner choose to change this angle to make it better visible from the main viewing side.

This reminds me of the 18th and 19th century diorama techniques used by modelers like Gerrit Schouten. Entrauner, do you know his work? These are interesting for Bodstonia Paul too:

Town of Paramaribo, Surinam:



Both diorama's were made around 1820.
These are, among others, displayed in the Rijksmuseum and Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.

Native Indians from Surinam:



Not only the perspective of architecture is distorted, in some of them also the scale of background figures differs from the foreground ones to increase the optical effect.

This technique makes taking pictures from different sides of the diorama a bit difficult.

[Siegfried]

amazing work Erik!

[entrauner]

thank you for all the comments and mr cryns for pointing out the historical background. I got a lot of books about these two guys and its just fascinating

this is a dio from way back and unfortunately I don't have a lot of pictures. when time permitts I'll make new ones.....I hardly remember what figs I used for conversions, but I guess from atalntic, revell, esci and one airfix

[Peter]

Thank you Erik!

[Hellboy]

Your diorama is fantastic!!

The beautiful building, the totally realistic looking plants, the beautiful figures and even the background image merge into a dream, a model maker-dream.

Thank you for the additional pictures and the historical background!

[Arekmaximus]

Amazing...
Thanks.