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Reaper Female Paladin with sculpted arch by James
This is by far my most ambitious diorama project. It stands roughly 10 inches high. About 3 pounds of sculpey and a half-mile of armature wire went into this piece :-) The logistics were tricky, since I knew that it would eventually have to be shipped to an ebay buyer. I had to be sure that it was not too top-heavy, and that the foliage would be tough enough to handle being packed up. That limited what I wanted to do with the trees, but then I was able to show more of the arch! I used several different types of sculpy. Sculpey 3 was used for all the bas relief areas, since it is the strongest polymer clay when baked. Regular sculpey was used for the base, and roughing out the main structure. Also, regular sculpey can be carved very easily after baking, and that allowed me to chip away parts of the surface and carve out the detials of the underlying bricks. Hacking away parts of the sculpey 3 sections after baking created natural cracks and fissures that looked far more realistic than anything I could have sculpted while it was still soft. Normally, I don't bake a piece until it is complete, but this required 3 seperate trips into the oven. The sheer weight of the top of the arch would have made it sag before it hardened. Since this was an ancient ruined tower, I had plenty of opportunities to "age" the structure. I spent many hours carving away cracks, etc. Staining the white alabaster arch and showing the bricks meant I could get a lot of nice contrast with the green foliage. The figure that goes with the arch had a custom base which matched pretty seamlessly with the cobblestone road on the main base. That was made with green stuff once the road section had been finished. This is one of several views that I will posting of the arch, and the Reaper Paladin that went with it.
Posted: 25 Nov 2003
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