Hi guys,

On my account I have two bases (snowy one and a kind of ploughed field). For my current project I plan to do a simple road and grass on the two sides. Here are few pics of a test on a piece of wood found in garage (no paint for now). Please let me know what you really think.

white glue with sand where the road will be



static grass







small rocks





I gave a solid over spray of hair lacquer and left it for night to settle down and dry

this morning pictures







Please let me know what you think.

thanks

spit

I like it but was wondering why no vehicular tracks?
Are you still going to paint the dirt road?

Hey Pawel. was thinking the same. Going to be hard to put vehical tracks in now. Also depending where the area is as to the color of the ground. It's usually better to paint the ground before adding grass and stuff, that way the color is under the grass. But your area could be by a beach, you didn't say. Also set your rocks and small stomes in the wet ground before it dries so they look as they are in the ground and not just sitting on top. If you can get ahold of it, the book Terrain modeling from Osprey, will show you alot of good ways to do these things. But anyway, this will work as is basicly, but without any vehicals. They will always leave footprints in the ground as they are heavy. Just go look at any dirt road around you. Hope this helps you in your build. Ground work takes alot of pre-planing. I have been doing it for years and still find myself at the end seeing something I forgot, and usually it's too late then. One step forward and two steps back, but you will always catch up with yourself.

thanks Tim and Bob.

As I said this is only a test so I won't use it for any model. Just wanted to do something quickly my way and counted on you to tell me what is wrong. The tyre, track patterns will be done when doing the "real" base. What I keep in mind is painting the whole base before applying the grass. I also got some comments elsewhere on how to apply the grass (so it stands more straight), how to create not a completely flat base but with some height differences , adding two or three flowers and maybe a bit of barbed wire country fence etc.
Thanks for the replies. If anyone has something more to say please do.

I'll post some more photos when I start the new base.

spit

Paweł,

The first and most obvious problem I see is the size of your dirt. Simply taking sand or dirt and dropping it on your base does not look realistic unless you are planning on using that base with 1/6 scale figures and even then it may be too big. What I would recommend is for you to go out to your garden and gather up some dirt. Let that dirt dry for a couple of day and then find a very fine sieve (sitko z małymi oczkami) and run your dirt through it. The stuff that gets through the mesh is what you will want to use as your scale dirt, not the stuff that was left behind. Obviously you can use some of the larger chunks too here and there but mainly you should be looking at using the fine powder.

The second thing I would recommend is to add some depth to your base. You can do that with either self drying clay, papier-mache (Celluclay) or even plaster and building the road and the sides of the road using those products. No road is truly flat even if it is made of asphalt or concrete.

These are just my two cents.

Hi Martin,

thank you for your answer. I've taken note of your comments. I always thought using the fine sand from the kids sand pit was a good idea. I may agree that some of the grains are too big. I also looked for pictures of rural, sandy roads and I came up with those three examples








So the road would be a little be lower than the grass and grass would have also some height differences. For the road, the sand, I thought using the baking soda. It has much smaller grains. I will also take a look in the garden and my surroundings though.

thanks for the tips

spit

Hi,

here's the real attempt. Please feel free to leave your comments.

road done with wall filler than fine sable + dark pigment



static grass applied and road painted with tamiya Flat Earth



grass painted green (a random mix) + general over spray with buff



dark brown wash applied on the road and my first bushes and tree















thanks for your help

spit