Wes Anderson’s perfectionist films often look like dollhouses enlarged to fit in human actors, but Barcelona-based illustrator Mar Cerdà has one-upped the director and created her own miniature dioramas replicating sets from several of his films.
This is meticulous work done in watercolor, then precisely cut and combined into scenes both two- and three-dimensional. For anyone who has tried to cut something very small and fiddly with an x-acto knife, you’ll appreciate her skill. (The artist in me is complete jelly, as they say.) So far she has recreated the concierge desk from The Grand Budapest Hotel, the berth from The Darjeeling Limited, and the bathroom from The Royal Tenenbaums, complete with Margot and her mom Etheline. (If you look deeper, you will also find this mini Margot box.)
Her love of Anderson is no surprise if you look at the other work in her portfolio. Her book Familiari is a series of figures that can be flipped to make “80,000 different families,” all of which give off the Tenenbaum group shot vibe. And her lovingly detailed recreation of an entry in a Menorca-located house shares a love of cute and colorful with the director’s art direction.
Dioramas aside, by the way, her watercolor technique as well as her figurative work is on point.
Currently, Cerdà is working on a Star Wars-themed diorama because, hey why not? Most everybody in the world loves that universe. And she also just finished a recreation of a scene from Zoolander. Follow her on Instagram, because there’s sure to be more to come.
Related Content:
The Perfect Symmetry of Wes Anderson’s Movies
Books in the Films of Wes Anderson: A Supercut for Bibliophiles
Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the FunkZone Podcast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.
I can’t tell the difference between these and the actual movies.
Hi Paul,
Do you happen to be the Paul Tatara who used to write movie reviews in the 1990s?
That’s me. Hi, Ted!