A Tribe of Tree People

I was looking to make use of some miniature solar powered tree houses I had made as decorations a few years back, and thought it'd be nice populate them. You can see the final image here, but here's some background:

The original idea was to make some little birdhouses that weren't really for birds:

I painted the ceramic pieces and made stick and rope ladders so that wee little people might use them:

Then they were hung outside with individual solar lights so they'd shine at night:

Recently, I thought I'd illustrate a little tribe of people to live in the houses and the surrounding tree. Originally, they were going to be newspaper scavengers, but it was too clumsy visually, so I ended up leaving them clean. These two brave soldiers were left out of the final image set because the outfits were goofy and their weapons made no sense once you removed the newspaper texture.