Introduction: Clay Great Unclean One Lamp With Dark Souls Shade

About: I love making things and keeping busy. I prefer making things rather than buying the finished products. People say to me 'you know, would have been cheaper if you just bought it', but they don't understand t…
I created a lamp for my son who is a Warhammer fan.  We were able to visit Forge World on our last vacation to awesome England. 

This is my version of the Great Unclean One from Games Workshop - the face is a little plumper and there are many more pustules so he is not an exact replica. We call him our 'not quite' Great Unclean One.

I found 2 pictures depicting the front and the back of this Greater Daemon of Nurgle and attempted to create a 3D sculpture from the 2D pictures. 

Material:

For clay sculpture --

Polymer Clay
Fimo Classic Clay in Leaf Green ** - approximately 5 blocks.  I like the firmness of this clay

Premo Clay in Spanish Olive ** - approximately 3 blocks.  Easier to blend than the Fimo

**NOTES REGADING THE CLAY *:  At first I had planned on using Fimo green clay for the entire sculpture and paint few detalis after baking.  However, i was down to one block of the Fimo Leaf Green and Michaels didn't carry that particular color (they were the only ones with a sale at the time).  I ended up buying Premo at Michaels in a very different shade.  I was glad to buy Premo because I found that it was easier to blend for particular details.  Using a combination of the firm Fimo green clay over larger areas and softer Premo clay for blending and detailing specific areas was best.  However, the 2 colors didn't match and so ended up basing the entire thing with black paint- so the color of the clay didn't matter at the end.

Various Sculpting tools - I also used the head of knitting needles for blending.

Aluminum Foil and Wires - to create armature

Varathane Polyurethane High Gloss Varnish - purchased from Amazon

Paint - used citadel paints from Games Workshop

Woodland Scenic Water Effects and sand (for the base) - purchased from Hobby Town

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For Lamp --

Lamp kit - purchased from Amazon

Small lamp shade - purchased from Walmart

Velleman Sound to Light Kit - purchased from Frys

LED bulb - purchased from Lowes

Grafix Vellum Paper - purchased from Lowes

Large glass bowl - purchases from Amazon

Step 1: GUO Head

Refer to the pictures for sculpting the head.

Additional Notes and Comments -

Roll a piece of aluminum foil into an egg shape and cover with a piece of flattened clay.  I wish I had created a more narrow head.  If I had to do it over again, I would have probably started with the body then sculpt the head based on the body size.

Roll out pieces of clay to build up the face and blend the seams.  I used Fimo clay for the face.  It was firm enough so that the details were not accidentally smooshed.  Roll pieces of the clay to build up the chin and create skin folds.

The picture shows a tongue added.  I later removed it to add a much longer tongue.

The teeth was created by creating indentations with a modeling tool.  However, I later modified the teeth to make them sharper.  I should have rolled conical small pieces of the teeth and add it to the face at this point

The antlers were created around a wire for better support.

Step 2: GUO Body

Refer to the pictures for sculpting the torso.

Additional Notes and Comments -

Roll out a larger piece of foil for armature for the body.  Flatten a thin sheet of clay and cover the foil - the covered clay does not need to be smooth (foil will make it lumpy) as additional pieces of clay are added later.

Roll out pieces of clay to add skin folds and chest.

Roll out logs of foil for the legs and arms.  Cover the foil with flattened sheet of foil.  Add piece of wire and the end of the clay covered foil and add to the body.  Additional clay will be added later so no need to make it  smooth.

Roll out logs of clay and add to the backside as buttocks and blend to the thighs.

Step 3: GUO Back

Refer to the pictures for sculpting the back.

Additional Notes and Comments -

Roll 2 semi spheres of foil and add to the back.  Flatten a thin piece of clay and cover the foil, and blend into the back.

Roll out longer piece of foil and flatten one side.  Add it to the bottom of the back and cover with a flatten piece of clay.  Blend the clay into the back.  Roll out some log pieces of clay and add to the back to create skin folds.

To create the spine, roll a log piece of clay and add between the 2 pieces of foil on the upper black.  Create indentations with a modeling tool. 
Flatten out a thin piece of clay and cut jagged edges to resemble ripped skin. Refer to the pictures on placement of the skin clay.

Step 4: Additional Body Details

Refer to the pictures for adding body details

Additional Notes and Comments -

After the basic body and legs have been created, bulk up and smooth out areas with additional clay.  Roll out pieces and add to sculpture - blend with clay tools and fingers. 

I used mostly Premo to add bulk and details.  The Fimo crumbled after the sculpture sat over night.  With the Premo, it was easy to use a ball tool and a needle tool to carve out the details.

For the bumps, roll out small pieces of premo and push down the edges with a ball tool and blend.

Wrinkles in the skin was created wiith both a needle tool and more blunt knitting needle tips.

Additional pieces of foil was added to create bulk around the stomach area to reduce the amount of clay needed.

Refer to photos for more information.

Bake the entire scultpure per instructions.  I had placed mine in a covered pan and backed for an hour.  I went back and added additional pustules on his back (and used Sculpey TLS to make it stick to the baked clay) and shoulders and baked it for an additional hour on low heat. 

Step 5: Painting the Sculpture

Refer to the pictures for painting.

At first I began painting without priming the scultpure and had terrible results - paint didn't adhere smoothly.  I first tested the Games Workshop Chaos Black Primer on a small model to make sure it didn't adversely affect the painting. 

Prime the entire model with Games Workshop Chaos Black primer.

Base coat the model with Stracken Green.  I did not base coat the mouth, tongue, antlers, or the opened wounds and left them black.

Base coat the spine with Bone.

Base coat the antlers with White Scar.

Base coat the tongue and intestines with Screamer Pink.  Mix some White Scar with the Screamer Pink for different parts of the intestine.

Add some Blood for the Blood God to the gaping wounds.

Wash the entire scultpure with Agrax Earthshade and allow to dry completely.

Dry brush some Orgryn Camo to the raised areas of the skin.

For the pustules, first add Cadian Fleshtone to the top of the pustules.  Then add the Screamer Pink around the base.  Add Blood for the Blood God around the base of the pustule.  

Add Nurgle's Rot to the open wounds, pustules, intestines, and around the spine for running pus.

Add additional Blood for the Blood God around the wounds and mouth.

Wash the entire scultpure again in Agrax Earthshade.

I added varnish to the entire sculpture for protection.

Later I looked at the scultpure and decided to fix the teeth.  Because the sculpture was already painted and varnished, I used cold porclenain clay for the teeth, then washed it with Agrax Nightshade. 

Step 6: Creating a Base

Take the glass bowl and cut a piece of cardboard that is a little wider than the opening of the bowl. 

Flatten a piece of black clay and cover the entire cardboard.

Take the glass blow and press it against the circular piece of clay to create an indentation.  Take a tool and deepen the indentation.

Bake the base.

I found a shoe cleaner that was the perfect size for the base.  I was able to remove the spines in the middle to add the circuit board.  Glue the base to the shoe cleaner. If a shoe cleaner was not available, I would probably have created a cylinder base out of cardboard and clay since I don't have the tools to cut a round block of wood.

Mix some paint (refer to picture) and add to the Woodland Scenics Water Effects.  Add a little bit of sand (I used Games Workshop sand).  Apply the mixture to the base.  I also added some to the bottom of the sculpture for oozing muddy effects.

Allow to dry completey - I let mine dry overnight.

Step 7: Adding Sound Reactive Light

Assemble the Velleman Sound to Light kit except don't add the LEDs directly to the board.  Instead, solder wires to the LED connections.  I marked my positive wires with a marker. 

Drill holes in the base that is large enough for the LED legs. 

Solder the LEDS to the wilres.  I covered the LED legs with heat shrink wrap after soldering the wires. 

Hot glue the circuit board to the bottom of the base.

I covered the LEDS with hot glue to make it look like hot lava.

I used a 9 volt battery cover that had a switch and soldered it to the circuit board.

Step 8: Create Lamp Shade

I stripped the fabric off of the lamp shade so that only a wire skeleton was left.  The lamp shade I bought had a ring that fit around the base of the bulb, and so a harp that came with the lamp kit was not needed.

I asked my son for 6 pictures and he selected pictures from Dark Souls.  I printed the pictures on the vellum paper in my inkjet printer.

Take a piece of cardstock paper and outline one of the shade side to create a template (refer to picture). 

Take the template and cut out the printed pictures.  I cut the top and bottom slightly longer than the template, and cut several slits in them.  They will overlap the top and bottom wires when glued.

Apply glue to the wires and glue the cut out vellum pieces, overlapping the top and bottom of the pictures over the wires.

I then applied Triple Thick glaze to the entire lamp shade using a sponge brush. Next time, I may skip the Triple Glaze but it did appear to make the shade stronger.  However, it caused more wrinkles as it dried.

Take some hemming tape and cover the lengthwise edges of the pictures.  Take bias tape and glue to the top and bottom of the lamp shade.



Step 9: Assembling the Lamp

Cut a round piece of cardboard to fit on the flat bottom part of the bowl. 

Flatten a piece of clay and cover the cardboard.

Roll 3 long sausages of clay.  Place the lamp piece on the clay and place the long sausages around the contour of the lamp piece.  I stacked 3 of the sausages of the clay until it reached the desire height.  The clay was placed in a sort of U shape to accomodate the lamp cord.

Bake the clay.

Turn the glass bowl upside down and glue the clay piece to the flat side.  I used Gorilla Glue for this.

Glue the lamp piece to the clay (refer to picture).  I used 5 minute quick cure epoxy to glue the lamp piece.

Add some epoxy around the indentation of the sculpture base and glue the inverted glass bowl.  Make sure to fit the glass bowl into the indentation.  Add some additional glue or silicone to further seal the edge of the bowl to the base.

Finally I took some cold porcelain clay, mixed black acrylic paint with it and covered the outside of the base to hide the glue.  I have a link to cold porcelain clay in my other instructable.

Finished!