Plaster comes in various "grades" and it's fairly important to get a dense/hard plaster. This allows you to carve details without it crumbling. Otherwise it ends up being little better than polyfiller and thats useless.
Just one extra point here, the plaster I used came from Jarrolds, so not far to walk for all those Norwich GW types. Though it is in their art department on the top floor so exercise is involved. Anyway it was a moderate sized box labeld "Hard Plaster", think it was for making picture frames and boss relief stuff.
Stage One:
Cut out the design and stick it down under a nice thin sheet of clear plastic. Good to see those figure blisters are still coming in handy. As you can see the idea is to have a circular design bit in one corner.
Stage Two:
This is the first mistake. I thought it would be a good idea to make the circular indent with green stuff, work a pattern into it and then just cast off that. Would have been much better just making a couple of circular sections from some more plastic, or even using a washer or coin. As it is the circles aren't quite right,
Stage Three:
Build up a bit of a wall with some blue tack, sloping in a bit as it goes up. Makes a nice simple shape for the plaster which is simply poured in the top.
Stage Four:
Remove the plaster from the mold. This is the easy bit
Note it would be even easier if you remember to coat the inside with something to stop the plaster sticking. Not quite sure what but given the odd bit I've read about casting figures talcum powder could be ok, otherwise maybe some vaseline or even a thin layer of oil. Anyway, the green stuff bit wasn't that well done so I probably wouldn't have re-used it anyway . . . .
Stage Five:
As you can see any design idea for the corner was a bit of a failure so it was out with the milliput and time to add some detail in the hard way. Sort of based some of it on the Rqackham language fonts, but my sculpting isn't really up to that much, and I was more interested in the impression of design than an actual one.
Stage Six:
Used a dremmel to adjust the edge and underside
Stage Seven:
Glued to the base
Painting
Just so no-one else makes these mistakes . . . .
1. The initial colour was too dark, I should have used something like a 50:50 mix of pale sand and middlestone.
2. The colour that was sponged on was overdone, should have used less and not tried "smearing" it but this probably because the base was too dark so it was distinctive enough etc . . . .
3. When painting a figure in NMM, do remember to limit the amount of metallic bronze you use on the base !
Stage One:
The base colours. Now ignoring the fact that I forgot I was doing a bse for a NMM figure and used metallics for the inlay, the idea is to use a base colour that is a bit darker than the final marble effect we hope to end up with. Although as mentioned, with 20:20 hindsight, I can quite easilly state that I used too dark a colour, either dark yellow or middlestone, when a even mix with pale sand would probably have been a better choice.
Stage Two:
The idea here is to add some texture and a bit of colour that will show through the later layers. I used some broze green to go with the greenish tones in the base colour and some vermillion to go with the final orange streak effect I wanted. This was applied with the good old weathering sponge technique, except I thought I'd try smearing it about a bit was well as just dabbing bits on.
With a bit more 20:20 hindsight I can come to some conclusions. The darker base colour meant there wasn't really enough contrast between it and these additional colours, which combined with the smearing and general over application (Should probably have done about half as much), very little of the shape and texture ends up in the final result.
Stage Three:
Well this is the result after 2 or 3 layers of Pale Sand. I like this colour, it's got just a hint of yellow and has a nice creamy look. Anyway, this shot is mainly included to show the part way progress to the next image . . .
Stage Four:
Quite a few more layers later, probably somewhere between 6 to 8 all told, some of which were less even than others, but that is actually a benefit ion some ways as the idea isn't to get a perfectly flat tone. There are in fact some quite noticeable lighter splodges near the circular insert.
Stage Five:
Time to put some of that expect marbling effect on. In this case a very dilute orange is used to position some meandering lines across the surface. At some point I remembered that they are meant to be seperate slabs and the lines shouldn't continue straight across the surface from one side of the seams to the other
At this point I also started to pay some attention to the groves between the tiles, darkening them in, adding a few "chips" at the edges and that sort of thing.
Stage Six:
The centres of the lines are picked out in a mixture of vermillion and bright orange with a series of short fine lines. Some more thinned orange is then used to bulk out the general shape some more.
In addition I finally got round to using some ivory to lighten up the areas between the orange seams. In some cases using it to empasise some of the darker shapes showing through the pale sand from the base layers.
Stage Seven:
Bit of a repeat of stage six, some thinned orange was used to emphasise and blend the seams in some more. Ivory was used apply a random mish mash of fine lines and streaks across the surface including the orange seams, as well as being used to pick out some of the form from the base layers and emphasise the grooves between the tiles and the few chips I'd added.
Stage Eight:
Time to re-do the orange seams after the ivory in stage seven. Firstly the vermillion and bright orange mix to re-work the centers of the seams, and then the tninned orange to blen it all in a bit more.
Oh, and a little white to pick out the groves between the tiles and on the weathering chips. Also used a little on the surface where I felt I could bring out some of the shapes from the base layers a bit more.
Stage Nine:
Finished the weathering on the metal insert and went back over most of the edges with white after the previous layers had cured fully.
