Castle Starcaster - Week Three

Castle Starcaster - Week Three
Originally uploaded by Alennka

The week started with yet more clay as the centre front panel was completed. I should have then kept working with the clay to cover the two half round tower structures that adorn both side walls but quite frankly couldn't face up to the thought of yet more clay. So the current plan is to paint these to match the crenellations and hope of the best. If it looks odd, I can always come back and go over them with clay to match the walls later.

With the clay work finally behind me (for now) I eagerly made a start on painting the stonework. After trimming back the excess clay to allow the crenellations and other features to fit ptoperly, I started with a couple of coats of light grey to hide the multicoloured clays used and to become the mortar between the stones. Next I dry brushed a medium brown and various greys over the stones. The results of this are what you see in the photo. I still need to do some more painting to lighten the overall colour of the stones and to pick out some individual stones in different colours and then, well, whatever I figure it still needs to look right.

I have (I hope) made a final decision about the interior layout, now I just need to decide on the decoration of the rooms, which is proving about as hard as deciding what the rooms will be and how to acess them was. I've decided to have two bedrooms, one at either end of the middle level and have one masculine and one feminine. Hopefully the feminine room will be suitable to display some of the lovely items I won in Linda's blog giveaway before Christmas. In between them will be the Library. It's walls should be lined with shelves of books, but between doorways, a fireplace and the stairs up to the next floor I'm wondering if there will be enough bookselves to justify calling the room a library, I may have to downgrade the room to a study.

Above the Library will be the magic room. As I have male and female bedrooms I had thought I might divide this room in two and have a masculine table of spells and potions and a feminine table of the same. Again, I don't think there will be quite enough room for two separate areas, so maybe one long table with a jumble of both styles? One member of the household will be researching dragons, so have dragon eggs, teeth, diagrams, skeletons and perhaps a couple of small live specimens.

Downstairs on the ground floor will be the entrance hall, dining room and kitchen. The high ceilings on this level enable me to alter the floor heights of the rooms. The kitchen will be a step or two up from the hall and have a faux cellar or maybe dungeon underneath. On the back wall of the entry hall will be a faux door raised up several steps from the floor level.