In a previous post, “A Light for Dark Times,” I talked about how my Aunt Clara had a major impact on my budding interest in art through watching her make Eggshell Dioramas. Unfortunately, none of my tentative fifth grader attempts at making dioramas have survived through the intervening half-century. No surprise, considering the number of moves our family made in a short 9-month period. Those times were a crucible out of which came creative impulses that continued in both my teenage and adult years.
Recently, I decided to dig back into the past and try my hand at making some eggshell art. It was a journey for me. First, because I had to try to remember the process of preparing the eggshells that I learned from my Aunt Clara. Second, because I didn’t want to just copy what she had done but wanted to express my own self with subjects that spoke to me. Third, (frankly) I wanted to make something that might sell. Finally, because creating can be a reflective process it allowed me to think back on a difficult time in my life and recognize that we can always take away positive experiences, even when there is so much negative going on around us.
My aunt had been creating dioramas and other commercially viable art pieces for many years, so her inventory of parts for the dioramas was extensive: figurines, pieces for stands, trims, designs, fabrics, and mosses for the interiors. Additionally, her husband (my Uncle Barkley) made figurines (and taught me how) using a tiny model, coating it with rubbery material that made a mold, peeling the mold off the model, then using plaster of Paris to fill the mold to create the figurines, peeling the mold off once the plaster had hardened. This gave them a wide range of subjects to use in the dioramas. There is no way to know now how many they made, but these were certainly not one-off endeavors. They had a cottage industry that provided their main source of income.
Since I had none of these resources at my disposal, including no way to make figurines from scratch, my first challenge was to find sources for materials that could be purchased in small quantities for a reasonable price. After researching on today’s shopping cornucopia, I found items that would fit into my concepts for outdoor themed eggshell dioramas. Purchases now made, I began thinking through the next crucial step – how to prepare the eggshells.
How do you take something extremely fragile and modify it without destroying it? Normally, YouTube is my teacher-of-choice for anything new that I’m attempting, but it couldn’t provide the right answers in this case. There are loads of videos on how to drain an egg, but these all seem to center around poking a hole in the top and another in the bottom, taking a deep breath, and blowing the yolk out of it. This did not have any appeal to me. Plus, it leaves two holes that have to be covered up. So instead, I poked a small hole in the center large enough to get scissors in, then snipped away to create an opening a little larger than the size of a quarter. Using a nail, I broke up the yolk, then the egg white and yolk simply poured out, leaving an empty shell that could be thoroughly washed out and left to dry.
Creating the oval opening was a trial-and-error process. Snip a little, cuss because of the cracks that extended further than wanted, then snip a little more. Finally using cuticle trimmers to nip away the rough edges and make a smooth, oval opening. After the initial cuts and while preparing to make the final trims, I first coated the interior with a white gesso acrylic. On future eggshell preparations, I’ll do this much earlier in the trimming phase. This reduced unwanted cracking and made it easier to cleanly trim away the opening, while also strengthening the eggshell.
Composing the Diorama
Next step for me was to now think of the interior compositions using the bits and bobs that had arrived from online purchases. It was immediately clear that in spite of using jumbo eggs (the largest that I could find), my initial visualization had way too many pieces for the small interior of the egg! So I scaled back to just a couple of items in each diorama.
To keep the eggshells from rolling all over the place, I glued wooden macrame rings on the bottom to create a steady stand. Now I was ready to paint the exterior. This was one of the most fun parts. Using acrylics, I just randomly swirled thick colors on the outside, coordinating the color with the overall theme of the diorama, rushing my way through to achieve spontaneity in the swirls. Another purpose of putting the paint on thickly was to help make the eggshell stronger.
Then I had to wait. Creating these dioramas was a process that happened over several days, not just quickly from inspiration to completion. The old saying about watching paint dry applies here, once you include waiting for glue to dry. Each step in the journey was always following by a waiting period, sometimes having to wait until the next day.
Painting the interiors was also fun, using a small brush to quickly paint the sky, trees, flowers, grass, and other backgrounds. Just little landscape designs! Here is one of the unique aspects of an eggshell diorama: Unlike a painting which you can hang on the wall and see all parts of it, the only way to appreciate an eggshell diorama is to pick it up (carefully!) and turn it in your hand to see everything created on the inside. I think for future efforts, I’ll plan little surprise images on the inside that no one knows are there unless they look closely. And again, after painting, had to wait for everything to dry.
Now we’re getting to another tricky part. On two of those completed, I used colorful small rocks that had been picked up on river camping trips to glue into the bottom as firm bases for the figurines. Positioning the rocks and figurines and using enough glue to firmly bind them in place was a little tricky, requiring tweezers and patience. Permanent, neutral Ph, archival quality, quick-drying glue from an art supply store was used. Now more waiting for the glue to set.
The final step was the trim around the edges of the cut opening. My aunt had used many different trims to complement her delicate diorama themes, but these all seemed a little out of place for the wildlife scenes that I had created. So I used 3/16” twisted cord. Downside was that the cord would badly fray at the ends when cut. Using glue and trying to mold them back together at the ends was my first solution, then putting a bead of glue on to round out the connection. After drying, I put an iridescent silver acrylic paint over the join. This works and looks pretty neat but was not totally satisfactory. I wound up buying a really nice pair of trim scissors with tiny, very sharp ends for snipping and some fabric binding glue to prepare the trim cord ahead of time where the cuts would be, keeping the cord from fraying. This worked really well.
The Creative Process
My journey on a path to a new way to creatively express myself was now complete. Probably slightly inaccurately, I think of the creative process as a Zen-thing. It is almost disappointing when you finally finish what you are working on.
All along the way, I was absorbed by the process, constantly having to think about the next step and how to complete it cleanly and creatively. Not every step was concluded with me feeling like it was all going to work out. In fact, several times along the way it felt like I was going to completely foul up and that I should just quit without investing more time. This is the way the creative process frequently plays out; inspiration, planning the project, self-doubt as the actuality initially falls short of the visualization, followed by persistence, and then finally having the finished work.
These first five Eggshell Dioramas are dedicated to my Aunt Clara, who has proven to be an inspiration to me even though the passage of time has clouded exact details. I’m already planning the next dioramas to work on and am glad to have added them to my catalog of creative activities!
If interested, these are available for sale, and you can find more information and photos at https://danielartandyarn.com/handpainted-eggshell-dioramas.