Kinross: Greening things up...

I’ve had a great time the past two days working on the scenery of the Prince Edward Island cameo, Kinross... a mix of my favourite past times, reading, research and model making...

Yesterday I applied a mixture of autumn 4.5 and winter 6.5mm Mini-natur fibres over Grass Masters flock cement and a little Woodland Scenics coarse turf in burnt grass using the Grass Masters Flock-it static applicator. This was intended to give a good base for further scenic work. The danger with static grass is you leave it in this state, it’s such a step forward from ground foam that you’re too scared to add further texture. I was certainly in this camp until I bought, read, and absorbed Gordon Gravett’s book on grassland modelling...

It’s a fantastically well written and inspiring, if pricey, book that should be on every modellers ‘book list’ if even to just borrow from the library. He describes giving static grass a hair cut as well as layering, giving ideas and materials for adding more texture. I began with using 4.5mm Mini-natur fibres in a puffer bottle applied to Peco layering spray applied through paper masks to give more control over where I wanted it. This allowed a denser green to be build up in places. Given a quick vacuum to thin things out amd remove the ‘flats fibres, over this I used a smaller mask and applied further 6.5 winter fibres in the bottle. I don’t find a static applicator necessary for this finer work.

The final stage was to begin to add some low lying shrubbery and undergrowth. Gordon opened my eyes to both Greenscenes scatter, as well as using postiche (fake hair) to create these thinly layered bushes. I use the Peco spray, add some teased out amd snipped up postiche, more glue spray, add some scatter, repeat... the result is a finely textured, see through bush, which exudes character.

This has now been put to one side, so I can reflect on the appearance, study more photos of Prince Edward Island and begin to think about some larger shrubs and small trees for the scene. I’m happy with the cpfinish so far, probably some of my best ground work to date. The shrubs in particular look great in the flesh and the balance of colour works, even if it’s not strictly accurate. I can’t think of a quieter more mindful way to spend a few hours this weekend. I hope you all have had a chance to take some time out for yourselves, on whatever projects your working on. In the meantime, more soon...