Carving Plaster

Firstly, welcome to our latest follower Gerard Boom (Geboom), it’s a privilege to have you here Gerard!
If you are at all interested in terrain making and want to see some high quality work, go and visit his website ‘Shifting Lands’ !

I was inspired to try a technique that Geboom has mastered with his Amsterdam Canal facades – plaster carving. I’ve not tried this since I was 15 years old, so I thought I’d start small. I wanted to make a master model for the pillars on my son’s Moria table, so that seemed like a good place to begin. I cast up a block of dental plaster roughly the right size, and then smoothed it off with sandpaper. Then in pencil I marked out the basic design. You have to accommodate any raised details in the block of plaster, so I had to carve out the main column shape leaving the base untouched. I’m still working on it at the moment, but you can see from these photos that it’s coming along. I think with a bit more practice and some more appropriate tools I should be able to get quite a lot of detail into a model. I plan on using this technique for a number of master models I hope to make for commercial sale in the future.

4 thoughts on “Carving Plaster

  1. Dagorlad, this peace looks promissing!
    I am impressed by the fact that you manage to carve this with the tool as shown in the pictures.
    Contact me and I send you the tool I use. I am sure you will find out what you can do with this tool.

    I will keep track of your progress.

    Geboom.

  2. That is really a great start! Although Geboom does carve still wet plaster I really like the pillars. Even the cracked stone on the second image looks great, although this is just a stadium of the progress. Please keep us informed on this project!

  3. “Master models for commercial sale” Now that sounds iiiiiiiiinteresting! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

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