Sunday, October 29, 2017

A Borie in a Day

A borie is a single-room stone hut, particularly found in Provence but in one form or another widely distributed throughout the Mediterranean basin.  I wanted something of the type to act as the dwelling of a hermit in a forthcoming Dark Ages game.


On Saturday afternoon I started with two pieces of Kingspan wall insulation stuck together with my hot glue gun.


These I carved roughly to shape...


...and then gradually more precisely using one of those DIY knives with the snap-off blade fully extended.

When it was carved to shape I started to engrave the stonework with a ball-point pen...


...Oh and I cut out the doorway and inscribed a lintel over it.  Then I went out for pizza.

When the whole thing was scribed, I painted it with textured exterior masonry paint all over....


...and that was the end of Saturday.

On Sunday morning I began painting.  Using a chisel shaped brush held so that the applied paint was in the same orientation as the individual stones I applied dabs of colour randomly across the stonework.  I started with a light brown...


... and then went on to grey, pale flesh colour, purple, and green.


I painted the interior of the door space black and made sure that the lintel was a single band of colour and then I started dry-brushing.  Grey-green first...


...and then Iraqi Sand and finally a light brush of pure white and I was finished.  It was now 10am on Sunday morning and time to go to Leeds for the Fiasco show.  21 hours elapsed from raw foam to finished article.




5 comments:

Pete. said...

Great technique- I like how all the colours look under the layers of drybrushing. I wouldn't have thought the purple would have worked so well.

Cheers,

Pete.

Fire at Will said...

Rather unusual subject nice outcome

Counterpane said...

Thanks for your comments, guys.

Phil said...

Creative and very nice job!

Counterpane said...

Cheers Phil!