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Hi!

With horrid memories of how my miniatures used to look back in the 90's after having their bases covered in all kinds of flock with the purpose of simulating grass I've never been to keen on basing my miniatures in a grassy theme in any way. But now I've now come up with a graveyard-theme for a Malifaux-crew that will require the bases to be somewhat covered in grass (some more than others). This time I really want those bases to pop so my question is "What is your best advice for great looking simulation of grass on a miniatures base?" I've been looking here and there for tutorials and such but haven't found anything convincing yet...

Just a few notions:
- If I don't approve of your method it doesn't mean I believe its bad in any way, it's simply not what I'm looking for.
- I'm quite a skeptic to static grass (but don't be afraid to suggest it if you have a way of making it really good looking)!
- I really want the mini to have the feeling of "wow it stands on grass!" rather than "that flock looks nice!" (if you get what I mean?).
- And please do support your advice with pictures (or a link to one) if possible, it's hard for me to make a judgement otherwise!
- But any advice are of course welcome (you don't always know what you want before you see it )!

Cheers!

Hi!
you could mix it up a little, i´m thinking, if its a graveyard theme, you could try grass, darkened earth and leafs, all dry and autumn-ish..

Something like this maybe?


anyways, if its not to your liking, maybe you will get an idea...

@christianbjargo - That looks splendid! That base got a great feeling to it and might just be what I'm looking for! What do you use as leafs and where did you get them? And, maybe a dumb question, you don't put grass under those leafs do you?

I think a lot of it will come down to grass placement - very small tufts of static grass looks better than large swathes, and is closer to how longer grass clumps grow on broken ground.

@SilverMK2 - I suppose you are right and tufts of grass between broken ground does look really good just as you've shown in your pictures. But I do want to give the impression that mini is standing more on a lawn than on a battered, war-torn or industrial landscape. But maybe tufts of grass between different kinds of foliage is the way to go anyway (like christianbjargo shows us with his image). Too big unbroken surfaces with static grass does tend to look rather odd imo (not saying it can't look good though).

The problem will be that most static grass will be quite long for a "lawn" type grass - from what I remember though you can get really short static grass (~1mm) but I have never used it. Mixing this through with the odd bit of longer grass would probably work for a lawn, especially if broken with the odd rock/etc.

@SilverMK2 - That is a fair point! But can't you trim the grass with a fine scissor like a nail-scissor or the like (once glued to the base)?

You could certainly. A choppy grass look could be done with scissors.

The offcuts could also be reused for the same look

@SilverMK2 - Sweet, I might just try that then (and good point with the offcuts , would probably just have thrown it away otherwise )!

@C0un7_0, almost every time i do the basing in layers, start with sand or gravel, paint it up, and then add leaves and grass.
When done like this it could be grass under some leafs, and not under others, youknow like trying to get the generic feeling of the enviroment i want to depict! You could get rally nice "leafs" from birch(björk) seeds another way is crushing dry leafs! ...and i really liked the idea of cutting static grass with a nail-scissor! Hope my broken English is understandable

@christianbjargo - Your English is fine as far as I'm concerned, but that might be because we speak broken English with the same dialect ! Thanks for the advice though, that was kind of what I had in mind, doing it in layers. I'll probably make a test-base some day to try and get the hang of it before moving on to the real deal so to speak. Haven't used static grass since those gloomy days of the 90's ! Birch aaah, I knew I've seen those pesky little plant things you nowdays can buy at some hobbystores before! If I'd just got this idea a couple of months earlier I've had all the birch-stuff I could possibly want ! Now its a bit trickier to get with half a meter of snow or so :-) . I could of course buy it from a hobbystore, but it does seem like a rip-off to buy something I have to sweep off the floor all summer ! Well well, I'll get some next summer and try to find something else for time being...

For short lawn grass why not try flock instead of static grass.
http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=287&CategoryID=13166&PageIndex=1
GFS007 Hobby Round: Summer Flock Blend.

cheers Vim

Maybe something like this for garden grass? Granted, the intention on mine is to look a bit abandoned so that size of grass works.

Putting grass on mine is basically just PVA Glue, plus dumping more static grass than what's required, then removing the excess.

@vim_the_good - I've been thinking of that kind of flock as well, it's just that I'm a little worried it will look more like moss than grass (or mold for that matter ). If you'd stumble upon a picture where someone have been using it with great result please post it here, it would be interesting to see!

@heartserenade - That looks great! My intention is for it to look look a little bit abandoned as well, but not very much. A stupid question perhaps, but how do you apply the flock? Do you just powder it over or put it down in tufts or any other way?

I didn't use flock: that's static grass. The trick to make it stand up is to pour a lot of static grass on top of the PVA. Just put a pile of them, then remove the excess. I mixed different kinds of grass and even put patches of just yellow grass, sometimes on top of the already dried grass to create a subtle layered effect.

@heartserenade - Ah yes, by flock I meant static grass Me and my friends have never really made any difference. I mean we can tell the differance between static grass, painted sawdust, that foamy stuff and so on but we usually refer to it all as flock ! Ah well, but now I know better! OK, "PVA glue, loads of grass, then remove the excess" (sort of), it should be interesting to try, thanks for the advice! Then if I'll put some foliage on there as well just as christianbjargo suggested I might just have what I'm looking for...