Plaster

There are a few more things I want to try out in the meantime. One of them is using plaster instead of sand for painting; as plaster sets quickly, I decided to mix it up and use it without any colour. After all, plaster can always be painted afterwards.

I’ve got two pieces of chipboard left over. I painted both of them yesterday. One has a coat of green on it. That tube of green watercolour (no, it’s not acrylic paint). On this board, I first sketched with a very large piece of pink pavement chalk. That was a right mess. Eventually, I found the blackboard chalks (right under my nose) and traced the sketch. I find sketching tedious work. I realised it doesn’t have to be that precise, because I’m going to fill the areas with plaster anyway and won’t see any of it then.

When you work with plaster, it’s a race against the clock. By the time I could finally get started with the filling knives, some of it had already started to dry out. I picked those little hard bits out of the plaster. The further I got, the more it had dried out.
So for the final section, I needed fresh plaster and mixed some up. Unfortunately, this plaster was a bit thinner and it was already getting dark.
The final bit – the eyes, nose and mouth – took an incredibly long time as a result. I kept trying to add some relief and tweak the face a bit. Actually, it turned out differently from what I’d planned.
I notice that the longer I fiddle with something, the more the original idea fades away. It’s a shame, but that’s just how it is.

In the end, I decided to stop. I have no idea if the plaster will fall off the chipboard. In any case, it felt quite heavy and doesn’t seem any lighter than sand, even though the art teacher claimed it was. The board also seemed damp. Tomorrow or the day after, I’ll see if it can be touched up, provided it hasn’t all crumbled off the board.

Actually, I don’t want to paint the whole thing. Who knows, I might do it after all, or just part of it. Or, for clarity’s sake, I’ll give each piece a different colour.

This was a fun things to do.

_{1-5-2026
Used materials: green watercolour paint, palette knives, chipboard, plaster}