Followup from yesterday afternoon’s post, I got the Milliput out and did a first pass on the piece.

As well as patching a couple of seams between blocks of styrofoam and rebuilding one stone I’d accidentally sliced too much off, I laid out the numbers of the main scatter diagram down the top three steps and got started on the throw-in scatter diagram that will be on the lowest step. The first and second tile of that are incomplete because there’s Milliput filling in some tears in the styrofoam at the rear of those two slabs; it’s much easier to wait until that batch of Milliput is cured before I try to add the numbers.

To the right of the temple are the first three weather icons. Left to right, I intend to use them as Fair Weather, Torrential Rain (with a lightning bolt too, just for interest) and Bright Sun. I still need to do a snowflake for Blizzard, another partial sun for the second Fair Weather icon, and do something for Sweltering Heat – flames, probably, as I’ve already got three sun-based icons.

The weather icons will be added to one of the three styrofoam cubes I also partially coated in Milliput but didn’t include in the photo. They need Milliput on the other couple of sides and some cleanup with sanding paper, then I’ll probably sculpt the additional weather icons and the numbers for score right onto the cubes after this.

I’ll probably also use Milliput to add a few decorative bits around the numbers on the temple steps after they’re cured and safe to work around. The round stones on the front face of each tower are crying out for some sort of decorative bit, but I’m not quite sure what to put there at this point…

People more experienced in putty-pushing than me almost certainly already know this, but a bit of olive oil on your tools (Xacto knife blade, mostly) works perfectly to keep Milliput from sticking. I understand it works on greenstuff and most other hobby putties, too. Can’t recall where I read that tip not long ago, but I finally tried it last night and it does indeed work!