Has anyone ever made a diorama set at night that is all painted to look like it's night? Size doesn't matter. It could be a vignette. I mean, for example,a camp fire at night where soldiers are sitting and light from the fire is painted on soldiers and everything behind them is dark from the abundance of light. Is such a thing even possible to pull of? I've been thinking about this while I was painting a figure and it caught my interest.

A couple months ago someone else brought up the same idea.

The biggest issue is that just adding black to colors makes them look muddy, not dark.

You could always take a look at wargamming paint tutorials as they do sometimes add 'lighting' to their figures; but the simplest solution would be to make a shroud to creat a dark space around you diorama.

The best way seems to be to paint it in tones of gray to represent night. Check these dios out to see more.

If the dio is not too big, and you're ambitious enough, you could do a box diorama with lighting, or rather some LED's in the campfire. Otherwise you would have to leave an explanatory note saying that it is nighttime!

In film production we used a light with a blue filter (clear plastic acetate) "gel" over it to represent night time or moon, light. Everything was bathed in those blue hues. Go back and look at old episodes of X Files, which were primarily night time, in the early days. This will give you an idea of what things would look like in a night time setting. Cheers.

I've had an unfinished box diorama for quite some time now, of an ODA doing a night hit. (I wonder where the inspiration came from?) If I ever finish it, there are some pretty startling effects in it. One thing I will give away: You can definitely cast some nice shadows with an artificial moon.

http://www.dynamicdioramas.org/MODEL%20SOURCE/changingoftheguard/.
Check this out.LED lighting.
This is the best night dio I've seen.Personally,I don't think any painting technique will give the look of it being at night.

Tom