MooMooEgg
Sr Member
My sister came home with a huge box of air dry terra cotta clay and asked me if I wanted to make anything with it. So I thought for a second and decided this would be a pretty cheap way to get myself a holy grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
I decided to model it after the tabletop scene where we first see the grail. My dad actually has a pottery wheel tucked away in the basement, but after a few ridiculously failed attempts at it, I ended up just sculpting it by hand.
And this is actually the very first time I ever attempted to build anything from scratch, so please forgive the rude and crude methods I used.
I first started with a rough build of grail in two parts: (1) the bowl and (2) the stem and foot. The clay seemed really heavy, so I didn't think the bowl could hold its own weight if completely sculpted on the stem. Both parts were oversized, and I wanted to just get a rough feel of them.
After the pieces stiffened a bit, I attached the two pieces with a little more clay and let it dry completely before doing anything else to it.
I started to do some heavy sanding to the grail with some course sandpaper (60 grit, I think) to smooth it out and tweak the shape. As you can see, it's starting to look a little bit better, but the bowl is still a little too tall and the stem a bit too short. The inside of the bowl is still pretty rough and the overall width of sides are still wide.
So after a few more days' work with the coarse and some finer grit sandpaper (and many huge piles of clay dust later), I managed to refine the shape of the grail pretty close to what's on screen. Of course, I don't know the exact dimensions of the screen used grail (It probably would have been smart to ask someone here what it was), but it seems like it's good enough (the height is about 5.75", bowl diameter is 4.5", and foot diameter is 2.5" for my grail - no idea how close I actually got).
I like the shape of the bowl, but it's not 100% centered on the stem and the raised flat area of the foot is a little sloppy due to the clay not being completely even. I also feel like the stem is a bit too short and thin, and it flares out a bit too drastically toward the foot. I probably went a bit overboard with the sanding to make everything as smooth as possible. I'm debating on whether to try and reduce the bowl height and tweak it to see if I can make the stem a few millimeters taller, but at the same time, I wonder if that'll cause the stem to get even thinner when I even things out.
I'll keep updating this as I start and work on the paint and leafing (which I need to do some research on - I have no idea how to proceed from here).
Update 8/17:
On a spare bowl, quickly primed and painted, I started to apply the leaf. I really didn't want the leaf to look painted on or have an artificial chipping effect, so I ended up blotting, not brushing, the leaf glue on with a sponge brush to see if that would create a good effect. And I actually do like the results. I really like the way the practice run came out - the edges of the leafed areas are sharp and jagged like I was aiming for and look like natural wear and tear, imo. I'm just hoping that I won't go overboard with the leaf on the actual grail like I did in practice.
Update 8/21:
Did a little more tweaking to the shape of the bowl and thinned it out a bit. The bowl is a bit smaller now, and the stem is a little bit taller to better resemble the on-screen version -- hard to really see since the change is so minimal, but I felt it was important to do. There was also a frustrating mishap where I put too much pressure on the bowl while sanding and cracked a huge piece off :cry. But I managed to repair that so it's not noticeable to anyone unless I point it out, especially since the whole thing is now primed and painted. So next was:
...gold leafing the inside of the bowl. I really thought it would be harder than it actually was. Right now there's only one layer of leaf, and I plan on adding a few more just to ensure full coverage.
UPDATE 8/26
Leafed the outside of the bowl. It came out alright, and I'm pretty glad I overdid it with the leafing.
I began to do a wash with brown and sand colored paints (thanks Brad). I actually used a bit too much brown, as I did a few layers of it because it wasn't sticking to the leafed areas for some reason, so the coat covered up much of the terra cotta color, unfortunately. However, the wash with the sand paint lightened everything up pretty nicely. And finally...
I applied a modest layer of "dirt", as shown on the grail when it's first shown. I mixed the sand paint with a few drops of black to darken it up and was hoping for a more pure grey color (would have been smart just to mix white with black... duh...), but it ended up looking a tiny bit green, which actually doesn't look that bad. Just used a sponge brush to dab it on and then another to kind of dry brush it softer. I really like how it came out =)
Here's a pic with no flash, and another next to my other Indy stuff ^_^
It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I'm really happy with it, even though it's not as perfect as I would like. I've been collecting props for a long time, and it finally feels good to actually make a replica of something with my own two hands. There are items in my collection that I think are way cooler than this, but I'm definitely the most proud of this piece. =)
I decided to model it after the tabletop scene where we first see the grail. My dad actually has a pottery wheel tucked away in the basement, but after a few ridiculously failed attempts at it, I ended up just sculpting it by hand.
And this is actually the very first time I ever attempted to build anything from scratch, so please forgive the rude and crude methods I used.
I first started with a rough build of grail in two parts: (1) the bowl and (2) the stem and foot. The clay seemed really heavy, so I didn't think the bowl could hold its own weight if completely sculpted on the stem. Both parts were oversized, and I wanted to just get a rough feel of them.
After the pieces stiffened a bit, I attached the two pieces with a little more clay and let it dry completely before doing anything else to it.
I started to do some heavy sanding to the grail with some course sandpaper (60 grit, I think) to smooth it out and tweak the shape. As you can see, it's starting to look a little bit better, but the bowl is still a little too tall and the stem a bit too short. The inside of the bowl is still pretty rough and the overall width of sides are still wide.
So after a few more days' work with the coarse and some finer grit sandpaper (and many huge piles of clay dust later), I managed to refine the shape of the grail pretty close to what's on screen. Of course, I don't know the exact dimensions of the screen used grail (It probably would have been smart to ask someone here what it was), but it seems like it's good enough (the height is about 5.75", bowl diameter is 4.5", and foot diameter is 2.5" for my grail - no idea how close I actually got).
I like the shape of the bowl, but it's not 100% centered on the stem and the raised flat area of the foot is a little sloppy due to the clay not being completely even. I also feel like the stem is a bit too short and thin, and it flares out a bit too drastically toward the foot. I probably went a bit overboard with the sanding to make everything as smooth as possible. I'm debating on whether to try and reduce the bowl height and tweak it to see if I can make the stem a few millimeters taller, but at the same time, I wonder if that'll cause the stem to get even thinner when I even things out.
I'll keep updating this as I start and work on the paint and leafing (which I need to do some research on - I have no idea how to proceed from here).
Update 8/17:
On a spare bowl, quickly primed and painted, I started to apply the leaf. I really didn't want the leaf to look painted on or have an artificial chipping effect, so I ended up blotting, not brushing, the leaf glue on with a sponge brush to see if that would create a good effect. And I actually do like the results. I really like the way the practice run came out - the edges of the leafed areas are sharp and jagged like I was aiming for and look like natural wear and tear, imo. I'm just hoping that I won't go overboard with the leaf on the actual grail like I did in practice.
Update 8/21:
Did a little more tweaking to the shape of the bowl and thinned it out a bit. The bowl is a bit smaller now, and the stem is a little bit taller to better resemble the on-screen version -- hard to really see since the change is so minimal, but I felt it was important to do. There was also a frustrating mishap where I put too much pressure on the bowl while sanding and cracked a huge piece off :cry. But I managed to repair that so it's not noticeable to anyone unless I point it out, especially since the whole thing is now primed and painted. So next was:
...gold leafing the inside of the bowl. I really thought it would be harder than it actually was. Right now there's only one layer of leaf, and I plan on adding a few more just to ensure full coverage.
UPDATE 8/26
Leafed the outside of the bowl. It came out alright, and I'm pretty glad I overdid it with the leafing.
I began to do a wash with brown and sand colored paints (thanks Brad). I actually used a bit too much brown, as I did a few layers of it because it wasn't sticking to the leafed areas for some reason, so the coat covered up much of the terra cotta color, unfortunately. However, the wash with the sand paint lightened everything up pretty nicely. And finally...
I applied a modest layer of "dirt", as shown on the grail when it's first shown. I mixed the sand paint with a few drops of black to darken it up and was hoping for a more pure grey color (would have been smart just to mix white with black... duh...), but it ended up looking a tiny bit green, which actually doesn't look that bad. Just used a sponge brush to dab it on and then another to kind of dry brush it softer. I really like how it came out =)
Here's a pic with no flash, and another next to my other Indy stuff ^_^
It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I'm really happy with it, even though it's not as perfect as I would like. I've been collecting props for a long time, and it finally feels good to actually make a replica of something with my own two hands. There are items in my collection that I think are way cooler than this, but I'm definitely the most proud of this piece. =)
Last edited:
