I’ve been looking at static grass and will be posting some videos on it shortly but this weekend I grassed a back bit and redid a section I did in the video to make it look a bit greener.
I’ve been using the WWW/Peco Scene grass and ordered the pasture colour that I had only seen online. It was bright blue green. Hmmm.
I used it as an undercoat and wasn’t too happy but when cut with a bit of spring colour grass, it reduces the yellowness which was just making my grass look a little more yellow than I wanted when compared with these photos:
Here’s the layout before I started:
And this is how it looks now:
It’s much greener but where that bottom bright green layer shows through – ouch! Some touching up needed!
As you can see, I’ve also grassed my trees but I’m not too worried as there is a row of low bushes due to come in front of there.
I then greened up last week’s grass to make it tie in better and hit that bright summer note rather than the yellower grass that was coming through.
Before (towards the right):
After.
That took less than an hour so not too long to do. I’m going to come back next week and see what I think of the colour when I see it cold. I may then go and redo some more areas and fill in some missing grass.
Hi Kathy
I am unable to give Peco Scenics the thumbs up as I have always found them gaudy and slightly un-natural colours. When I had my retail model shop I gave Peco scatter a try and disliked it. My customers would give it a try and come to the same conclusions as myself. I noticed that Peco Scatter changed colour under varied lighting conditions. Maybe by experimenting with different light sources will make the blueness go away? I never got around to doing lighting experiments between the 1970s and now, so I don’t think I shall bother doing so now
I used to stock Javis Scenics in my shop and produce myown scatter material. I used to dye sieved sawdust, bag it and sell that too. I used mixtures of Dylon green, brown and yellow dye and I produced a realistic range of scatter material.
Nowadays I love to use Javis static grass along with Noch and other German scenic manufacturers like Faller. These are what I prefer to use today. There is another British manufacturer I came across since I semi- retired and that is War World Scenics. I will have to do a Google in order to find the supplier and buy more stocks.
I usually blend different shades of long fibre and short fibre together and the result is realistic or maybe I should say more convincing?
I was impressed by the fake fur long grass technique used on the classic exhibition layout – Stoke Summit. I saw the layout at the Scottish National exhibition in Glasgow several years ago and was shown the ways of using fake fur in a tutorial.
Using fake fur one must clip the fur with hair trimming shears and I do the clipping in stages, getting varied lengths and add it to static grass before I apply it to the layout. It gives my Texan based Santa Fe layout a feeling of having dead grass with new growth breaking through.
Hope my thoughts and experiences may be useful to you sometime,
Cheers
Tom Jenkins
In a wet and windy Cumbria
Tom
You’ll need to wait for the videos for the full response but Peco Scene is now supplying War World Scenics so it is not the same product that you are thinking of.
Kathy