I left the menhir in the barn over the week, and on Saturday I was back to continue working on it. I started with adding more very fine filler to it it, sanding the worst bumps down and then I painted it grey. After advice from Pilerud's cosplay I used regular indoor wall paint to paint it with. Now it looked like concrete. I also discovered a bit of a chipping issue, once I painted I saw a lot of white and blue flecks on the menhir. I was worried about the filler not sticking to the insulation material, but we think it was more an issue with dust getting into small holes and then falling out when we were moving the menhir about, taking the paint above the dust with it.
Then I sat down to google menhirs when it comes to colours. A rock isn't just a solid colour, it's made up of different minerals and crystals, and I wanted it to look natural. I googled menhir of Bretagne and got a lot of different rocks, but I especially liked one that was mostly dark with ligher and som redbrown intrusions. To get the colours I wanted I made two paint mixes, I used the wall paint as a base and then i added ivory black to one of them and red, and raw umber to the other one. The paint was brushed on and then I went over it with paper towels to remove and brushmarks, and to erasing the borders between the different colours.
Then came the issue of actually being able to carry the menhir. One reason I'm mainly using the live action film as a reference is that he is wearing the menhir in a kind of backpack.
Mathias had found this metal framed backpack/bike bag.
I removed the bag itself and covered all the straps in fake suede.
We added a strap to go around the menhir, a really sturdy one and connected them.
It is heavy, but I can carry it. I need to hold on to the shoulder straps though. When we tightened them more the menhir rode up too high in the back and that was really uncomfortable.
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