Moss

[Stephen Rainsbury]

Any ideas how I can represent moss growing up between pavement slabs and slightly encroaching onto them? Painting it looks too smooth, all my scatter looks too lumpy and static grass looks a bit tall.. there has to be an easier way of doing this :-)

[MickT]

How about very fine sand, or chinchilla dust?

[Graeme Dunbar]

For a small quantity you could try sifting some scatter material through a fine sieve such as a tea strainer. There is usually a mixture of sized particles.

I think it will have to be somewhat over scale anyway to have some texture and not look just like lumpy paint.

[Hobby]

It's one of those "compromise" situations, personally I'd do Graeme's method rather than paint, though, that's what I've done for cobbles. It'll never look completely right in HO/OO scales, you just have to live with it and do the best you can.

[JulienW]

Just a thought - and I've not tried this (but I might!) - but what about applying some kind of glue, thick PVA for example, to make the mossy lumps that you then allow to set before applying some (very) Matt mossy green shades? The other thought would be to use one of the textured paints as the blob (or mix some very fine sand with the PVA) and painting it greenish when it has dried...

That should give something that stands out from the surface (road, wall, roof, whatever) its growing on, but I'd have thought that looking at moss from the sort of scale distance we would look at a layout (at a guess most of us looking at a road surface on a layout are a scale 30 - 40 feet away from it) you could make out a blob of colour standing proud of the road (wall, etc) but not the texture of the moss itself within the 'blob'.

As I said, just a thought as I've not tried it....   yet!

[Stephen Rainsbury]

Thanks chaps, there are some good ideas there.  I am going to experiment more with them.

I want it for the paving slabs leading up to an occupational bridge right over a stream at the front of the layout and until it's done I can't lay that track :-(.

That area of the layout an area is going to be overgrown scrub land, so the bridge will be a bit of a focal point and I want to get it just right. There are capping stones over the bridge supports and so as it is over a river I think it would be very mossy.   My reference photo is below. I would like to get little clumps of different shades at random intervals, maybe use fine scatter and dry brushing? 

[Hobby]

I don't know if this'll work, but this is what I've been trying to model, grass/cobbles... I've got a little bit closer on Ostrovia but even then it's a compromise. I've tried putting glue down on the cobbles, wiping it off (so leaving some glue in the gaps), and then putting on fine green scatter.

https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?x=15.0741026&y=49.2954628&z=17&pano=1&source=muni&id=4913&pid=45348211&yaw=4.623&fov=1.257&pitch=0.314

[Stephen Rainsbury]

I don't know if this'll work, but this is what I've been trying to model, grass/cobbles... I've got a little bit closer on Ostrovia but even then it's a compromise. I've tried putting glue down on the cobbles, wiping it off (so leaving some glue in the gaps), and then putting on fine green scatter.

Thnaks, I am going to try that.

[duttonbay]

My reference photo is below. I would like to get little clumps of different shades at random intervals, maybe use fine scatter and dry brushing? 

If you stand 75 or 150 feet away (above?) from that stretch of paving would you see any texture, or just thin bits of green? That's the equivalent of viewing your model from 1 or 2 feet away.

[Graeme Dunbar]

I think that depends on your modelling style. Yes in the same sense that flat, printed brick paper and slates are are more "accurate" than ones with relief such as plastic but often the expectation is to see texture and the model looks odd without it.

I did work out once but have forgotten at what distance the human eye fails to resolve 6 mm/ 1/4", about the depth of brick mortar, some slates and moss, but it is not far.

Lighting (in the real world) makes a huge difference too. Things look a lot flatter on dull overcast days but it is possible to see all the brick-layers inaccuracies and not just the mortar courses in sharp glancing sunlight.

Edit: looked it up:

"The human eye has an angular resolution of about 1 arcminute (0.02 degrees or 0.0003 radians) which enables us to distinguish things that are 30 centimetres apart at a distance of 1 kilometre."

https://plus.maths.org/content/what-can-we-see

If my arithmetic is right, that's about 20 m or about 260 mm in OO so in the order of 75 ft.

[Stephen Rainsbury]

I think that depends on your modelling style. Yes in the same sense that flat, printed brick paper and slates are are more "accurate" than ones with relief such as plastic but often the expectation is to see texture and the model looks odd without it.

Thanks, that absolutely sums up my feelings about cardboard buildings, I know I should like them, but they never seem to "come alive" for me.   I used to add shading and high lights to force the impression of texture, but I have been trying to avoid that with railways as I want to be able to view them from any angle. 

[Graeme Dunbar]

I get the impression that the brain compensates pretty quickly to different "styles" when there is nothing to draw attention to inconsistencies, so card models can look just as good as other materials. However put a card model building right next to a plastic kit with over scale recesses such as mortar courses and each will accentuate the limitations of the other.

[Hobby]

There's also what the brain "expects" to see. For a stone or brick building it expects to see a certain roughness and not a smooth finish.

I hate brick and stone paper with a vengeance, and kits which use that method which tend to be the older card ones. I've not found an angle yet where they don't look exactly what they are, flat paper with some ink on them. At the other extreme there is the "lazy man's way to make up plastic kits" where Faller and other plastic building kits have been glued together with no painting or weathering at all, resulting in exactly what it was in the box, a gloss plastic building! At least you can do something with the plastic kits with a drop of paint.

For me the most realistic are the embossed cards, whether stone, brick, or whatever. With a little weathering they are the bee's knees!

[Stephen Rainsbury]

I get the impression that the brain compensates pretty quickly to different "styles" when there is nothing to draw attention to inconsistencies, so card models can look just as good as other materials. However put a card model building right next to a plastic kit with over scale recesses such as mortar courses and each will accentuate the limitations of the other.

That's a very good point, although I always assumed that the mortar courses were deliberately deep so that you could fill them with a different colour paint easily then wipe off the excess. I am going to get paranoid about measuring kits now :-)

[Stephen Rainsbury]

There's also what the brain "expects" to see. For a stone or brick building it expects to see a certain roughness and not a smooth finish.

For me the most realistic are the embossed cards, whether stone, brick, or whatever. With a little weathering they are the bee's knees!

I agree about the texture and have been trying to get a slight roughness on embossed stone work to give the impression of age. Sieved sand was too rough and sharp, talcum powder didn't make enough difference so I have tried coating it with solvent and dabbing it fast with my finger tips. Once dry I will give it a gentle sand to remove excessive peaks and see what that looks like painted.

This is teh first time I have tried weather a railway model, my SciFi stuff has always been a bit over dramatic but this is a very small occupational bridge over a river and I want to make it look slightly neglected. 

It is currently primed in grey, but I want to pick some of the stones out with slightly different shades then I was thinking a thinish black wash to bring out the detail,then the course with thinned down yellow/white paint, with the excess wiped off, a green wash near the bottom, wipe of near the top but left lower down, probably a lighter grey brush brushed down from the top just to create some highlights and emphasis the texture, and may be some darker grey going up to give a bit of depth, but I will play it by eye on that one. :-)