So another week has gone by and I finally started to make some progress on the boards after some colour testing. It's taken me awhile to find the right blend for the grasses that I want. Rather than try to cover the lot in tall grasses I decided to make patches and in other places put some tall upright straw/ grass. However, the next section of boards might include a whole wheat field..
I mixed up my base earth later using the captains tried and tested paint/ sand pva mix and applied to it to all areas save the craters. I also gave the road a bit of a coat with plaster mixed with paint to give it more of a smooth, worn look. I trundled my Lledo model T through it to give it some tracks (and spent the next 20 minutes getting plaster out of the undercarriage!). Once sanded it looked better.
Next the upright grasses. Basically a natural door mat cut into small sections and pushed into pva filled holes in the polystyrene. My five and three year old assistants loved jabbing deep holes in the terrain for this part of the job..
Again, the look I wanted was for a section of the Somme that had been in the previous years fighting and which had had time to begin to regenerate, but which fighting is about to cover again.
The small drain channel will eventually have static water and reeds applied (plus some dead horses/ ammunition boxes etc) but for now I just wanted to build what looked like a jerry rigged bridge that had replaced whatever structure was there before it was obliterated. I just used lolly sticks.
I also started adding a bit of detail to other areas. Bullet holes in the tree trunks, patches of rusting pig iron from old destroyed infantry shrapnel shelters, a small area of duckboard in one of the lanes as well as a few patches of old barbed wire.
I don't want too much battlefiled clutter at this stage as I plan eventually to make some removeable 'patches' of this. A copse of shattered trees, a line of broken and destroyed artillery limbers...more dead horses, a shattered lorry etc..
So once the details were in and base coated I flocked the lot, leaving it fairly absent from the edges of the shellholes and more dense by the road edges and in the hollows. This was a bit tricky around the long grass patches and I am in two minds about the value of putting the patches down first..
Next stage will be the second (tall) grass coating, in which we shall see some poppies. Oh, and I get to play around with this stuff to make some extra mud:
Comments very much appreciated! They do keep me going in the wee small hours when I get time to do this!
28 April 2008, 09:09:21 PM
