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.