Wild Tuft – Brown

Dead growth

In a landscape brown is the color of grass that is no longer growing. It appears where vehicles have trampled the growth down, where water has stood, where the ground has frozen through or where last year's stalk has come through the winter and is waiting for new vegetation. For a modeler it is one of the most useful shades of all, because no scene comes across as credible when the whole of it is equally fresh. The alternation of living and dead vegetation is precisely the small thing that tells a worked out scene from an area covered with a single material.

Four millimeters and what to do with them

A medium length lets individual stalks come out and at the same time does not cover the terrain beneath. It suits rutted tracks, the space between rails, the foot of stumps, the banks of pools and everywhere mud is meant to meet vegetation. It is precisely in the transition between soil and growth that this shade works best: brown clumps laid on the boundary of the two surfaces blur that boundary and the join stops showing.

Recommended procedure

Settle the clumps only once the terrain is finished, but still before the final dusting with pigments. Pigment powder applied over the fibers tints them slightly and the growth thereby merges with the surrounding soil; were you to go the other way about it, the grass would look laid onto a finished scene from outside. Before settling them check that the base is dry, because damp soil ruins the adhesive layer on the underside and the tuft later comes loose.

What you get

In the package there are thirty-five clumps on a common backing. They are intended for immediate use, no preparation and no painting before settling is necessary, and the unused part can be left on the backing for next time.