More vegetation…
So this is the look I was going for: thick winter undergrowth. At the top is what I would call brambles, below is a type of ivy. I had to remind myself that in winter there is still plenty of greenery around, but it’s often more sparse and you can see a lot more of the branches and twigs beneath the leaves.
So I started with building up layers of the lichen and something called ‘forest pine weathered’ from Mininatur (also known as Siliflor in some countries).
Then I gave it a blast of Tamiya Earth Brown with an airbrush. Whilst I had the paint in the airbrush, I also sprayed groundwork in random patterns to make it more interesting.
The next step was to add more structure to the shrubs using the horsehair. Although it comes in rectangular clumps, if you cut and tear it carefully then it’s big advantage becme apparent: it has circular patterns which look like the real thing. Another coat of earth tone was then airbrushed, with some yellow added into the mix to give more of a red brown look.
The last stage was to add the leaves. To be honest I was largely winging it here and I have to admit that my first effort didn’t quite work…
I started with Mininatur birch leaves which I had left over from my Malaya 1941 project. These were simply attached by brushing PVA onto the branches and adding clumps which I either cut or tore to shape.
At first they seemed to work well, although they were a bit on the bright side. But this didn’t really matter because I was always planning on toning them.
But in the end I decided that it wasn’t so much the colour that was wrong - but the scale. These leaves just looked too big for the small shrubs that I was after. So I decided to gently rip it all away and go back to the foliage that I had used at the back of the diorama:
This another MiniNatur product called ‘Summer Ivy’ 936-22. Although the leaves are ivy-shaped, they are so small that - to my eye at least - in 1/35 this just looks like any sort of shrub leaf.
The effect was also helped here and there by some small clumps of dead leaves (the late fall birch foliage I used for part of the wall ivy), as well as the odd bit of birch leaf that had remained attached after I had pulled most of it off.
There is still some work to be done by adding tones with acrylic paints, but all in all I am happy with the result.
Other foliage was added from the various sets I had acquired, with a particular favourite being ‘Spikey Beige’ from Gamer’s Grass. You will also see some bracken / fern leaves and some ivy climbing up the telegraph pole, all of which came from laser cut paper from Model Scene.