Since my earliest days,modeling has always been more than simply the construction and painting of the kit. Much of my enjoyment has come from creating the small vignettes (or larger dioramas) that set the stage and complete the story. However, sometimes finding the proper materials to create our scenes can be a challenge. Often we find that grasses and landscape items have poor detail or are in the wrong scale. Other times the techniques can be to difficult or time consuming that the project is not enjoyable.
Now we have some good options for making good-looking scenes, quickly and easily. In this short tutorial, I will show the use of some new AMMO vegetation products; grass matts “Pinewood Forest” and “Stony Mountain Ground”, and leaves “Maple” and “Oak”. As you will see, these products are easy to use, versatile and most importantly look great.
The subject of this scene comes from a series of photographs showing abandoned World War II era bunkers in West Virginia. During their time, these bunkers produced and stored gunpowder for the war effort, but were shut down at the end of the war and remain empty.
Items used for this project include Stony Mountain Ground (A.MIG-8351), Pinewood Forest Base (A-MIG-8352), Maple/Autumn leaves (A.MIG-8400) and Oak/Dry Leaves (A.MIG-8402).
In this photo you can see that I am preparing the groundwork by applying pigments over the surfaces. This application will provide a nice, earthen colored base and a little texture upon which to place the vegetation materials. The construction of the bunker and base will be covered in a future article.
The AMMO vegetation mats are packages as a large rectangle; ashape would be nice if I was making a farm pasture, but my ground terrain is full of irregular shapes. Not a problem! The backing material of the grass mats is a woven mesh that can be pulled apart or easily cut to shape. Any excess “strings” are trimmed away.
With the proper shape in hand I dab a little super glue around the edges of the backing mesh.
Then the sections of grass mat are placed upon the base.In this case, I can take advantage of the squared edges of the mat to fit this piece perfectly into the corner. It’s really that easy!!
The flexible nature of these vegetation mats allows them to conform to almost any shaped contour. Again, a little superglue on the back and then the grass is pressed into place.
If you choose, tufts of grass can be pulled off from the backing andplaced individuallyin certain places to help hide and any edges or seams.
A very light misting of A.MIG-036 Dust acrylic color helps to eliminate any synthetic sheen and unify the overall appearance of the landscape.
I purposefully left small areas of bare soil (remember the pigments I did earlier?) to show through between the patches of grass. The small stones and rocks are painted incolors similar to those found within the stony the vegetation mats.
A scattering of dried leaves is a good way to give the entry of the bunker a neglected, windswept appearance. Sand and Gravel glue will be used to adhere the leave.
The leaves are placed onto the surfaces and then lightly touched with a brush moistened with Sand and Gravel glue to fix in place. A few extra touches here and there and my base is complete.
Rick Lawler
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