More Green Grass... and Trees Too!

I thought I would share a few more pictures of progress with scenery on my (whisper it) 009 project. When this was last seen on the blog I had added hanging basket grass to the cutting side and some basic ground cover elsewhere.

After some thought about whether to change tack and go for a ground foam based approach, I continued on with a few changes to approach, notably using my 'gunk' mix - emulsion paint/PVA/filler - as the basis for ground cover, quickly adding a sieved on layer of Woodland Scenics 'Fine Turf' whilst wet to give a good mix of colour and texture. This finish can be seen in the picture below, with the addition of a representation of tree roots made using string and covered in more gunk. This makes up for the lack of any roots on the Hornby Skale Scenics trees.

Dead leaves, in the form of tea leaves and a sprinkle of sawdust, were added to the ground and held in place with PVA and matt medium. The Peco flexible fencing was left over from my 4mm 'Inglenook' project years ago. I had sprayed this with matt varnish for that project but the stuff is so damn flexible the paint falls off it! It was weathered with acrylics prior to installation and touched back in again afterwards where the paint was chipped during installation. The trees were fixed in place using 'Gorilla' PVA and once set the roots were joined to the trunks using more gunk and colour blended in with acrylic paints.

These images also illustrate my experiments with scrubby bushes. These were made as a batch on the workbench using Green Scene meadow grass mat, torn into random shapes, scrunched up and sprayed with hairspray then sprinkled in various foams. They are PVA'd in place once left overnight for the hairspray to dry. Some of these growths have appeared in the cutting at the top of the rock face.

This is the present state of the project. The tree at the right is another Skale Scenics example treated in the same manner as the smaller ones, including a waft of matt varnish over the branch structure; a few bald patches given extra density using offcuts of hanging basket liner and the whole thing covered in hairspray and given extra foliage coverage. This is good practice for the next trees which will be newer growths made using sea foam.
 

Colin