Pegasus Diorama

I made this diorama for my friend Christina as a going away present last spring. Do you remember the movie Fantasia? The pegasus part was always my favorite – I still love drawing fantasy creatures like dragons and pegasii – these are all original pen and ink drawings of flying horses done with Winsor & Newton drawing ink and a Micron .005 pen.

I love dioramas because they can make your 2-D art come alive!

Here is the finished diorama – I made the box from binders board and painted the inside blue and the outside black. The little pegasii at the top appear to be suspended in the air and are held out from the back of the box by paper tabs. All of the drawings were done on watercolor paper.

First I drew everything on thick cold-press watercolor paper, after that I inked it using a brush  – it’s important to let the ink from the drawing dry completely first before you paint over it in ink, or it will blur.

I use very thin sharp decoupage scissors to cut out tiny pieces of paper – the pointy ends of the scissors make it easy to go around tight corners. Here you can see a nice closeup of the biggest pegasus – if you look at the mane and tail you can see where I have built up multiple colors of ink – here pink, scarlet and purple to make a nice deep purple color.

I used the blue paper in the background as the sky on the back and bottom of the box – after cutting out my shapes, I made tabs on the side and bottom of each one, to attach them to the inside of the box.

Here’s a closeup of the finished product! As you can see, I staggered the clouds and also made those that were farther away darker. I used little paper tabs to help the pegasii appear to fly.

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