Project: Iraqi mosque

Well this project was inspired by a video from youtube or google, an interview of an American veteran Jesse Mac Beth from the war from Iraq. Still could not find back the video.(will link when I find it.) Anyway in the interview the American airborne ranger, claims that he and guys from his unit used to raid mosque filled with worshippers at night and opening fire on them. He claims the civilian lost in iraq were higher than reported in the media. He also claims that he alone shot and killed about 200 Iraqis and they were unarmed civilians. The Abu Ghaib prison incident is just one incident that was caught and shown all over world. Countless ones go unreported. Okay found the video on google :http://video.google.com/videoplay?

After this video was released then some videos by bloggers began appearing claiming Jesse Mac Beth was a fake Iraq war veteran and that there were no proof to his claims. Was I hoodwinked and was I bamboozled? A few months later I found on youtube, a video shot obviously by an American soldier on the bombing of a mosque. Do you think this is a fake?


There are now a couple more videos on youtube on mosque raids and firefights to prove that this things happen. There is a war of propaganda going on and off the web in parallel to the actual Iraq war on the ground.

Pretty grim accounts really. Anyway I'm here just to create a diorama that reminds me and express to others that we should be grateful that mosques and other places of worship in our countries are safe to be in.

No soldiers with weapons are preparing to storm us and begin shooting at us. Be grateful there is peace for us cause there is no peace for others in countries like Iraq, Afganistan and Palestine. Does'nt mean it does not happen to us today that it will not happen to us in the future.

Okay I hope I don't scare people away with the research. Clearly this is the real deal happening and history in the making. This is the only point in history that we get a clearer insight to what's really happening in our world today without media censorship or having to wait for Hollywood to tell us the story.

Okay let's get back to the project on hand. For the design of the mosque I did not replicate a real mosque but took the basic design of many different mosques I could find in Iraq and simplified them. I finally settled down on the size and planned to place the mosque on a wooden base I got from Spotlight.

Materials

This time for materials to build the mini mosque, I purchased a cylindrical and spherical styrofoam to use as the 2 minarets and top dome of the mosque. For the tilework and and cement around the mosque, I used paperclay. The tricky part was cutting the V-Shaped pattern on the walls of the mosque which was made of layers of foamboard glue togethet by using PVA glue. I'm glad I chose this design since it was neither too simple looking or overly complicated to build.

Since it is Iraq, the ground colour have to be desert looking. So I used mostly real fine sand and added pieces of dried clay to simulate debris.

The door was made out of thin balsa wood.

Colouring

The whole external colour from the building to the ground I used different mixtures of desert and sand colours(experiment the different colour combinations. After airbrushing the base colours I did lots of drybrushing to make it look more weathered.

The internal floor tiling was pretty daunting to paint. The random dotted pattern however worked I think. I also build some shoes out of paperclay and foam to be placed outside the mosque, since Muslims leave their footwear outside the doorway always.

The humvee is an old purchase I got(at least 6 years ago) Just to make it interesting I left it in the picture. Anyway this not finished yet. A couple more additions to this diorama coming up soon. Well till my next update, adios and peace to all.