It's been a month, but I finally made some more headway. The master is now about 98% finished.
Still need to patch up a few areas with epoxy, rather than plaster. The areas in question is very small and tight, which plaster doesn't let itself to. I also need to use fine-grit sandpaper to file down some of the areas that have very obvious scrape marks - I'm going for more of a chipped stone look, rather than scraped stone.
You should totally go premium and sell some of these in the Junkyard. I know I'd buy a couple claws! Fantastic work and great job on the tutorial as well!
2 solid layers of Dark Tan. 1 dry-brush layer of Sand. 1 wash of Sand. 1 dry-brush of light Olive Drab. 1 dry-brush of Radome Tan. 1 more dry-brush of Sand. 1 speckling of custom mixed grey. 1 speckling of light Olive Drab. 1 speckling of Radome Tan. 1 speckling of Dark Tan.
This is the reference image I was tasked with emulating:
Finally wore out the mold for the fossil claw. I'm going to have to make a new mold with softer silicone. But before that, I have to repair the plaster master, since it broke when I demolded it the first time. I don't want to use a resin pull as a second-gen master, since even the smallest deformities have been causing a lot of fitment issues with the Vertical Rock display (the one with the claw-shaped recess).
Anyway, all the nooks and grooves on the claw were grabbing and ripping the silicone apart from the inside, until it finally tore a huge chunk out of both halves of the mold.