Jan Willem bring us a simple and very effective way to creating perfect forest floors, just what you need to create your diorama in no-time!

Link to Item



If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Yes! Absolutely superb...and so easy!!

Just one tiny bit of info:

dry leaves can be collected from birch catkins (or "aments") in autumn. Just pluck them, roll them between your fingers and they crumple into nice single leaves (and a great number of tiny bugs to make your wives happy ).

Apart from a little bit of work, they are of course free of charge!

Cheers

Romain

awesome!!

Excellent! I really need to practise groundwork...

Top job

Could you show us how you made the trees?

Jan-Willem,

Superb! You just inspired me to return to an ongoing diorama! Your work is great!

Thank you for a great How-to!

Cheers!
Stefan

Thank you guys

@JPTRR
A greater compliment you couldn't have given me.

Cheers,

JW

Great article with nice photos!

Question: When spraying with diluted white glue, how do you prevent the scene from not looking all wet, soppy, and damp? The thing with wetting dry groundwork is that the colors change and the water may turn all dryness into mush. This is a problem I've experienced when spraying diluted white glue to hold all the leaves onto the grass.

The flipside is NOT spraying white glue runs the risk of the leaves blowing away with the slightest breeze because no glue holds them down.

Thanks for the feedback.

This is very helpful and awesome. I too wonder how did you do the trees?

@ GregCloseCombat and Blackstoat

The tree are just the classic Seafoam trees with just an application of a special putty for the bark. The leaves are parsley and the tops given a bit more green colour by airbrushing them with some bright green. Nothing really special but I'll see if I can whip up a small how-to.

@ Trisaw

I make a mix of 1 part white glue to 4 parts water. The key is to use a spray bottle that creates a mist and not a stream (I use a hair product spray bottle I confiscated from my wife). Just a misting between each layer should be enough to hold the scatter material down you should never apply so much that you start to see large droplets form or puddles collect. If that does happen you can remove some of the excess with a piece of tissue paper. If at the end of forming your forest floor you find you still have some lose material you can always apply some additional glue mix to those areas.

Hi Jan, well done! It looks very realistic. Hope you wil write a small how-to for building the tree's. I'am interessted in it.

He Guys,

As soon as I find the time to do it I'll do one on making the trees.

Jan, is the powder ,plaster of paris or a sheetrock spackle?

He Belg1960,

It is more like sheetrock spackle (it is soled here in the Netherlands as large hole filler). it has a grainy texture that it keeps after drying.

Cheers,

JW

Nice work Jan,

Al

I use E-Z water in my dioramas. I think if you seal the ends of riverbeds or whatever with DAP kitchen and bath sealer, let it dry, then pour your E-Z water it will solve the curling problem you encounter using plastic card. once the E-Z water hardens, simply strip the DAP borders off your diorama!