Speaking about his Polymer Clay diaramas, Karl says...

"My diaramas are an extension of an illustrated feature that ran in Heavy Metal magazine in the late 70's. Titled collectively The Galactic Geographic series, the series is now continuing the that magazine.

"The diaramas attempt to accomplish in 3-D what my painting did in 2-D: Credible views of alien worlds."

Click Any Image for a Larger View

The Airwhale was detailed in a six-page "article" called the Passing of the Airwhales" The diarama was meant to emulate a museum exhibit of the future called "Airwhale Feeding Ground".	The Tsailerol piece, the blue tripodal critter is a lifeform I worked out for my series in Heavy Metal magazine. I refer to them often as "the nearest thing to humans we've found in the galaxy"
The "Redspike", the first of my dioramas, depicts a slug-like critter crawling through its habitat; a swamp. I took a quick 33mm slide of it before it sold at a Phila. Sci Fi convention art show. It is the only image I have of it and I apologize for its poor detail.	"Mars Relic" describes this piece perfectly. Surely a dome would be built near the site of such a discovery. This piece is an example of several 'landcape' pieces that represent larger scale viewpoints. I have done similar pieces showing lunar and Martian scenes.
"Planis Seafloor" is also a Galactic Geographic place. The sea floor of an all-ocean planet.	The "Lotus Eater" is one of the most dreaded creatures we've found. He's unstoppably curious.<G>

Extra - Thoughts on Construction:

When I was a child I loved to play with miniatures and would play outside. In the mosses and other tiny plants I saw a microcosm of the larger natural world. So, when I began producing miniature dioramas, I tried to incorporate natural plants to make them look natural. My training and experience as an illustrator has helped me make them seem real.

Most of my pieces are produced in the following steps:

Cover a piece of hardwood with acrylic gesso. Let dry (Gesso helps sculpey to stick to the wood). Next, put a layer of sculpey over the top and sides of the piece and begin detailing. When finished the work is baked and detailed using acrylic paints. I find that Mat Finish acrylic medium is an all-purpose glue, paint, and glazing material. I use gloss medium to make some details look wet.

I sometimes encase the pieces in plastic boxes. Getting the boxes made and put together cleanly is probably the hardest part of the whole process.