Wild Tuft – Dry Green

Green that has grown thirsty

This tone lies exactly between a fresh meadow and a burned hillside. The stalks still hold a green base, but the edges have already yellowed, which is the color of August grass after several weeks without rain. A modeler will value it everywhere pure green would come across as too springlike and beige, by contrast, as desert.

The package holds seventeen pieces and the fiber reaches twelve millimeters. This is growth into which, in the usual military scale, a figure wades up to the calves and through which a prone rifleman cannot see. On a diorama a place thereby comes about where a line of sight can be hidden, as can an unfinished corner of the base.

A few observations on the build

• Do not plant tall stalks in a row; natural growth grows in clusters.
• Choose this step at the edge of a scene; lower sizes belong toward the front.
• Tufts can be divided into smaller clumps before gluing and the seventeen thus stretched.
• Once dry, try fluffing the growth up lightly with an old brush; flattened fibers will rise.

If you are building a scene in southern Moravia, in Spain or anywhere summer drought sets in hard, this shade works as the base tone of a meadow and not merely as an accompaniment. Combine it with a few more saturated green pieces by water and with beige ones on raised places, where the sun beats hardest. The transition between three tones turns flat green into landscape.

The fibers separate from the carrier film easily, but it pays to work one at a time and to glue at once. If you lay several out on the table at once, they merge and when picked up they break apart into small pieces which you then throw away for nothing.