Greek Temple in plaster

Saturday morning was spent shopping and checking on my daughters leaking washing machine. However on returning home, I was confronted with a box full of Plaster of Paris castings of a Greek Temple, the original of which I had modeled for Grand Manner earlier in the month. For those who regularly follow my Blog, you cannot fail to know that I produce 'masters' for Dave at GM. These particular castings are different, as I had asked Dave if he could cast them in plaster rather than resin, so I could build myself a diorama or special feature of a raised temple base with rocks (also plaster castings) and even a cave built into the side.

The castings were still raw or slightly damp and very easy to work with. The base is a large piece of packing foam, with the plaster panels glued to the foam with No More Nails and the joins filled with DAS modelling clay.

The steps to the front and back are cut and textured Pink Foam which I still need to cover with watered-down filler, but what you see here is a day of modelling at the bottom of the garden, a great day of modelling in the sun, one that I thoroughly enjoyed.

My intention is to model the temple as a partial ruin, the actual 'master' is a complete and non-ruined casting, but as usual I wanted a modified model, something very original to act as the basis of my 40mm Typhon or Ancient Greek project. Whether it will ever be used as such is debatable as the collection of Spartan Games Argonauts are still to be painted.

The main reason for this latest post is that I now realise I have finally found my preferred modelling medium - Plaster, working with it it almost second nature and so much easier than trying to convert resin castings and fill sculpts with Milliput. My preferred modelling material, DAS works so well with the plaster (always remembering to wet the plaster and use some uPVA glue as a bond).

This is a huge model, 36cms long, 24cms wide and so far 8cms tall (that's so far, as the temple building still needs to be added to this base). My intention is to fully textured a baseboard, 60cms x 60cms and use it as a centre piece.

I hope that you enjoy the work-in-progress shots, but really it's all about me having fun!

Tony

PS.

Dave just came around visiting (out for a ride on his Triumph motorbike) and having seen the work-in-progress, now want to cast this in resin! So we may see this temple base as a Grand Manner model.