GUEST BLOG: Wall by Ron Hoess

Walls
In our mock up we have a number of garden walls, the most important is one that runs between the pub and the tea shop. Obviously one could make any sort of stonework one wants. For me, I wanted to capture the type of stone walls that I had seen in the Cotswolds. These walls tend to be made of flat stone that is not necessarily very large either. Furthermore, if mortar is used, it is not very noticable. To get this sort of look I applied Sculptamold to my Gatorfoam. Sculptamold is a papier-mache product that one mixes with water and applies with a spatula. It tends to leave a rougher surface than joint compound which is what I want for a stone wall surface. There is a critical difference though in working with Sculptamold versus joint compound. With Sculptamold one needs to do any carving before it really dries and hardens; otherwise you will need a hammer and chisel. I apply the Sculptamold and allow it to set for about and hour and then I have a window of several hours when I can carved it. Since I wanted this wall to appear mortarless I made sure to carve very deeply into the Sculptamold. Since the stones were modest in size, it took a lot of carving. If you think it is tedious you are absolutely correct. After the carving is done let the Sculptamold dry for at least a day or more before painting it. I didn’t want the wall to be a uniform color so I mixed up about a half dozen different colors of acrylics and applied them. Yes each stone is painted individually, and you thought carving was tedious! When I finished the wall still didn’t have quite the right look. I realized that the space between stones was still white. I then took an extremely fine brush and carefully ran black paint between the stones. The effect was dramatic, all of a sudden the stones had a three dimensional look to them and not a white mortar line in site. As a final touch I took a dilute dark green paint and touched it to the surface of a few stones to give it the look of moss or algae growing on the stones.