Grass

The California golden grass is turning out nice, as is the other small scenery texture.  I like it.

Nice!

What a beautiful scene! That cab forward is massive. Almost looks as if the narrow gauge loco is a different scale. Is the grass all done with a static grass technique? Very effective!

  Is the grass all done

Thanks for the kind words!

Nope not static grass.  I have tried that but it ends up too shiny and too thin in my hands.

The grass is Busch trockengras (dry grass) which is a grass mat on a flexible clear backing.  It is probably put down with a static process but it is thicker than I can achieve and has a matte finish.  I also like its color.  It is easy to apply by tearing off pieces and pushing them onto wet latex paint mixed with white glue.  It conforms nicely to the scenery contours.  I then dry-brushed some colors onto the grass to make it more variable.  The grass on the hill in the background is all AMS fine ground foam of few different yellow/tan colors.

Very Nice!

The scene along with the scenery you have created is awesome!  Looking forward to seeing more photos of the layout!  Looking at the trees in the foreground and background has me wondering what you used to create them?  

Greg

Good texures

Duncan,

Very nicely done, I like the small rock outcropping in the distance and the exposed dirt patch on the hillside, it all adds to the texture.

Funny, I didn't notice you used ground foam for grass in the background until you mentioned it. Great job and please post more pics!

Stan

Trees

I made the trees using California Laurel Sumac buds.  In the late winter the dried flower buds of this bush can be cut off to make excellent armatures for trees.  I used Noch flocking for the trees in back and grass flocking for the one in the left foreground.  The plant is very common in Southern California.  I found out about this plant from David Frary on a podcast a couple of years ago.  I had been passing this tree by and on my hikes and not harvesting the buds.  Now I know better!

This is wht the bush looks like in the spring covered with flowers.  In the winter they dry and in the late winter after teh seeds fall off they are ready to harvest.  Although if you look you can usually find some dead branches with nice buds at any time of the year.

Here are a few examples of trees made with the buds.  you just dip the tree in diluted matte medium (or diluted white glue will work as well) and then sprinkle on some flocking.  The tree on the right is before flocking.

By the way, all of the rocks were carved following Joe Fugate's video scenery video.