Detailling the module
MTo this point, we have a piece of brown plaster desert with a stretch of street. We´ll change that in this chapter...
You certainly have an empty jam-glas in your household. We will need it for the next working steps. Additionally, we need some turf, a small plastic bottle to sprinkle the turf on (the one made by Noch, Item # 08100, is my favorite), built-up houses, some figures, and a variety of plants.
Let us start with the buildings: it is up to you wether you leave them as they are or go ahead and "weather" them. There are, as always, many methods out there for this job. For newbies to weatheing, I recommend the "chalk technique" because an inadequate result can be easily corrected with a bit of water and a toothbrush without damaging the building. If you already gained some experience, you are invited to change to the "wet technique".
The chalk technique:
TWe need a small knife, simple school chalk, a stiff small paintbrush, and a finger.
Use the knife to scrape some light brown chalk onto a piece of scrap cardboard or paper. Pick the chalk up with the paintbrush and - working from top to bottom . stipple the chalk onto the building walls. After that, use your finger to actaully "smear" the chalk down the wall. The result should resemble rainwater and dirt that poured down the wall. There are lots of real-world examples out there to copy from.
The wet technique:
For this job, we need some black, green, and brown latex paint. Mix a shade of grimy dirt and thin it with lots of water. Done that, add a drop of dish detergent to eliminate the surface tension of the watery solution. Make sure that the surface you are working on (usually your benchwork - definitely NOT the coffee table! - is covered with some paper towels to take up drippings from your work as the watery solution creeps into every nook and cranny and tends to run down the model´s sides very fast. This effect is no disadvantage but exactly what we want.
Instead of a stiff paintbrush we now need a soft round artist´s paintbrush. Soak it with the paint solution and swiftly wipe it over the top of the buildng wall from left to right (or vice-versa if you´re left-handed). Before you add a second layer, the wall should be dry in order to judge the appearance. To speed up the drying process, you could use a hairdryer an slow speed. A general rule is: prefer aonther layer over too much paint!
Right, now that the buildings are dry, they are placed onto the module for a test-fit. If you like the result, pencil in the outlines of the buildings directly on the plaster surface. Don´t forget to write down a short description into the outline, so you will later know which building goes where.
Now we need the jam-glas:
Mix some green latex paint with a generous blob of white glue and water to a creamy consistency. This is your glue for sprinkling on the gras or turf. Paint a generous layer of glue onto an area of approximately 1 foot square. The above mentioned plastic bottle is filled now to two-thirds with turf or gras and thoroughly shaken to elecrostatically load up the turf. Now "shoot" the turf onto the painted area by squeezing the bottle. The result is a lawn "from the book", standing upright and ready to be mowed...
Next, the buildings are plugged in or glued on.
Trees and bushes...
...can either be bought from the hobby shop or scratch-built almost free of charge.
The easiest and fastest way to scratch building trees and bushes is if you gather the required raw materials directly from Mother Nature. Many weeds, grasses, and roots offer themselves for scratch building. A word of warning, though: Don´t even think of touching plants which are protected by nature conservation laws. If you get caught at this, hefty punishment is at stake for you. If you are not sure and want to be on the safe side, just go to the next flower shop and invest a couple of cents for weeds and thin twigs. For leaves, commercially available foliage or turf is the ideal stuff. You can buy this at your local hobby shop. To affix the leaves to the twigs, use the cheapest hair lacqueur (not hair spray) you can get a hold on. A rule of thumb says: the cheaper the stuff, the more it stinks... and the more it sticks. I don´t recommend spray-glue as it tends to clump.
Natural material should be thoroughly dried before you start working with it. Hang thin twigs upside down from a line so they won´t break. For those who can´t wait there is an alternative: Seafoam (Teloxys Aristata or Chenopodium Aristatum L.). Originally, this plant comes from the Gobi desert. Ready to work-on bundles are available in hobby shops or in architectural shops. However, this stuff is not cheap and so there is another alternative: Grow it yourself - Blooming time is from August to September. Simply let it dry out after blooming amd you have readily available armatures for trees and bushes. The seed can be ordered for example from Chiltenseeds in the UK. Cultivating your own trees is a lot cheaper than buying. After drying, you can harvest the seeds and start growing the next generation.
Natural weeds and twigs are selected after the tree one wants to build. What? Well, a birch certainly looks different from an oak. Consequently, our model also has to show this difference. A few examples:
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If the selected twigs are already close to the prototype tree one wants to model but are not yet optimal, just add a few twigs or use a pair of scissors to cut out the surplus. If everything looks right, paint the armature with latex paint and sprinkle on some very fine sand to stand in for the bark. Then let the hole "winter tree" dry.
For the second step of tree production we need some filter cotton as it is used in aquarium filters. Other than household cotton, the filter cotton is made of synthetic fibres and does not foul. Stretch a small clump of cotton to a very fine net. Now spray the tree armature´s crown with a good layer of hair lacqueur and pull the cotton net over the tree crown. It serves as a base for the "leaves". Keep on adding cotton until you are satisfied with the crown. After that, spray the net with hair lacquer again and sprinkle on very fine turf. The turf again is - you guessed right - sprayed with a layer of hair lacquer. Go on until you think that the tree has enough leaves. Working time per tree: ca. 5 to 10 minutes. Cost per tree : ca. 5 to 8 Euro-Cents....
Fences are needed almost everywhere. Don´t let us discuss industrial products here but rather some fences not everyboday has: How about - for example - a wraught iron fence for an older industrial lot or as a front yard fence? We need fine fixing pins, lace border, and some paint from a spray bottle. Just a second, what was that? Lace border? Yes, you read it; these borders are available from household or textile stores and lend themselves to this kind of fence because of their ornamental design. The whole thing works like this:
Thread fixing pins through the border in a distance of 5 to 7 cm ( 2 to 2.5"). They serve as fence posts. Repeat this procedure for the length of the future fence. If all pins are set, push the raw fence into a piece of soft wood or into a styrofoam block and spray it an anthracite color. After the paint has dried, the border is a lot stiffer than before and can easily be placed into your scenery base. If you like, you may dip the pin base into white glue before pushing it into the plaster.
Another type of fence that is often needed, is the old pasture fence. To make such a simple fence, we need black sewing thread, fixing pins, and cyanoacrylite (CA) glue. This time, the pins are painted a rusty shade and pushed into the scenery alomg the way of the fence´s course. Twist the thread around the first pin (fence post) and secure it with a very small drop of CA. Using this method, go from pin to pin until you reach the first pin. Hmmm, an access to the pasture would be great, so we need a gate. You certainly have some sprues left over from your last kit, eh? These are just the stuff needed to build gate. If you don´t have a pasture in your neighbourhood, there are plenty of pictures on the internet to use as a prototype...
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© 2009 by Erhard Baltrusch, Hamburg, Germany