What colors do you all use for your ground work? say like for the european theater.

When you don't portrait an event set in a precise area like my hometown in Luxembourg set in the middle of the iron quarry's where a redish tone would be better, i suggest that you simply play with every earth tone you can mix.
By mix, i mean it. Don't stay with Tamiya Earth for example. Ad a bit of gray, make it lighter, sandy, whatever looks good, that's the most important, the look.

Claude

it largely depends on the effect , i personaly use artists acrylics , although cheap sets are available in most shops i personaly would give them a miss and buy good quality like windsor and newton as seperate required colours from an art shop .

for my first diorama i used them for the mud and grass underpainting as i am a painter and have a large sellection

the colours i used for my mud were burnt umber , yellow ochre and white ,

a photo of the diorama , and a photo i took near home to demo earth colours

basicaly my other hobby is photography and a good reccomendation is to go out walking and observe things arround you and also take photos for refrence

the tree is planned for a future dio !!

The mud-effect looks really cool!

I planned 2 different types of desert-terrain. One would be light-sand to white-ish (seen on photos), the other more reddish to black - but very complicated (no useful color-photos available).

Soeren

Pat, I use what ever ground colors I can find on sale ar a art store. They usually have a bin up front with low cost specials. I just mix them up till I have a darker shade than what I want and mix it right in with the plaster, this way if I have to remove any ground work during constrution ( best layed plans will often go amuck) I still have earth colore ground. The colors will fade when you add to the plaster, that's why I make it darker. When all is installed, I go back with several oil wash's and a final dry brush to pick up the highlights.

I highly suggest using Google Maps. Zoom over to the location you want to model (even down to the town/city!) and then click on "More---> Photos" in the upper right of the map. You will get thumbnails of photos taken at that location you can click on and see first hand what colors, foiliage, buildings, etc are there. Much better than guessing!
Andy

don't forget the difrent seasons if using google maps colours vary hugely in the seasons in europe

so make absolutely sure you are using photos from the time of year you intend modelling


another good source is in a google search go to google images , then search for say " northern france landscapes " and there should be a host of images to help .. it is a terriffic photo bank

just did my suggested google images search for northern france landscape and this was a first page image