One thing I have never got into, and that's making my own scatter and flock material. I know some scratch builders would scoff at the fact I buy mine all pre-made and packaged, but hey, making the stuff would bore the pants off me. I just want to do the fun stuff. Judging by my collection, scatter is made (I'm guessing) from dyed sawdust, or dyed sponge, chopped up very small, but to be honest, I don't actually care. I've also got that model-railway favourite, reindeer moss, or lichen.
A good rule of thumb I always work to is to build the vegetation up in layers, starting at the deepest undergrowth and working up to the top. I've started with a patchy layer of mainly dark brown scatter, which has got nice bits of organic 'stuff' in it, I find this makes a good ground cover to work up from. Using pva glue again, I liberally paint random patches where I want this layer to be, and then sprinkle the scatter over the glue, and leave to dry before shaking off the excess onto newspaper and pouring it back in the pack.
I bought a lot of my scatter packs from an ebay seller who crops up from time to time, called forgedinblood. He gives them all evocative names like 'orc scrubland', 'lothlorien', 'old world woods', 'hobbit meadow' and 'emerald elf havens' and it makes me go all misty eyed and want to start throwing money at the screen.
The rest of it comes mainly from antenociti's workshop, which is a good online shop with a wide range of scratchbuilding materials from the major suppliers (woodland scenics, silflor, noch, etc, and they do a limited range of their own brand (decorplus) which is reasonably priced. Most of the stuff in the foreground of the pic below is forgedinblood stuff, with some antenociti packs in there as well. If you're vaguely interested in doing any terrain building of your own, go have a rummage through antenociti's scratchbuilding paradise (http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/), it's very inspiring. My most recent acquisition is a pack of pre-formed trailing ivy for spreading across ancient ruined walls (and non-ruined, but if I'm making it, you can bet it will probably be ruined). You can see the rectangular pack peeping out at the back of the table on the far left, just in front of some clump foliage I use for trees. For the amount you get it costs a *#! fortune, but it looks totally awesome - every little ivy leaf is individually formed. I'm saving it for a particularly spectacular ruin.
Back to the mountain - the layers go on one at a time, same process as the first, with a complete drying time inbetween each.
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| some 'bramble' scatter (ground up spongey stuff from antenociti) |
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| both pieces together with bramble scatter - and boy #2's homework and spud gun |
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| with the static grass to finish it off. |
Since I built this piece, I bought my static grass applicator (the large metal sieve thing - see CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS) which I have yet to try out. The idea is this - instead of just sprinkling on the static grass like normal scatter (as I have done on this mountain), after you've painted on your pva glue, you tap a small pin nail into the centre of the area you've just glued. The applicator has an earth wire that clips onto the pin, and a battery inside the handle creates a static charge on the grass in the sieve. Then you shake the grass onto the glue through the sieve, and the static charge makes all the blades of grass stand on end as they land on the pva glue, making it look like the grass is growing up out of the board - like real grass! I have seen youtube clips of this being done, and it looks amazing. I'll let you know how I get on once I've had a go with mine....
Another thing I want to do is buy some different lengths of static grass. The stuff I'm using is all the same length and the grass ends up looking like a golf green. The figures stand nicely on it for wargaming, but it offends my sense of aesthetics. I want the grass to look a little more, well, mountain-y.
Next time - something a little different. I bought a set of resin-cast pieces to make a medieval tavern diorama which I have recently finished painting, and they look rather good if I do say so myself. Here's some of them just after undercoating:
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