Grass!

[johnbrewer]

Hi all, Guy saw my post to Robin about the grass that was sent to him in the snail mail by myself. This is my method of making scale grass to make up the groundwork for those figures we all love to paint.

I use cock feathers. These come in a bewildering variation of clours but I tend to stck to the browns or natural feathers. These have the added bonus of being cheaper !. Do not go to the local fishing store or mail order and get a Meta cape. These cost a small fortune . Buy the Indian cock capes. See picture below for some of my collection

 

[johnbrewer]

Now pull out one of the feathers from the skin of the cape. If you do not like the idea of this the feathers can be bought loose.

 

[johnbrewer]

Now strip of all of the fine bits at the base of the feather, just grasp in between your finger and thumb and pull it away.

 

[johnbrewer]

for the next stage you will need some pva glue. It saves sticking the fingers together and dries nice an quick . Take a small pinch of the feather fibre . the picture here is worth a thousand words.

You will be left with the ends of the fibre showing out on some glue to form a shuttle cock shape.

 

[johnbrewer]

You noe have your end product, repeat until you have enough clumps of grass.

 

[johnbrewer]

Now to the groundwork. The grass clumps look best in odd numbers and not in straight lines. Try to be random but this is more difficult than it seems. I always like to place some clumps near objects on the base, rocks tree stumps, etc. Drill a hole and place in the grass clump using some glue. I then put a layer of static grass at the base of each clump and then more greass around the base. this builds the clump up from the base, not like something that has been glued in there . The feather can be painted or left as is, better still mix up your browns to give a mixed look. Please see one of my attempts, give it a go and see what you think.

If all else fails you have some feathers to do some fly tying with and go trout fishing

 

[gordy]

excellent

an article is needed for that

 

[JCOX]

Great tip John! Forgive my ignorance, but what are Indian cock 'capes' (I know they're cock feathers but what is 'capes') and where do you buy them?

-jim cox

 

[Joe Hudson]

Hey John,

I like the feathers but it seems like you will have a ton of work cut out for you if you want to cover alot of ground. I have used the feathers in place on knights and a few other figures. Here is a picture of what I did when I need to cover more space. I used jute twind.

Joe

 

[Joe Hudson]

another view

 

[Guy]

Thanks for the tip about the feathers John. I bought alot of feathers for some Zulu head dress's I did years ago and now I know I can use them for something else too. How well do they paint up as I have quite a few colored feathers and would have to paint them.

guy

 

[Robin]

Article, get an article written Mr Brewer.

Jokng aside these are great, what a bit ingenuity can do.

Gordy what about a tips forum

Robin