Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Lichen and moss

Tumbledown Barn

Some time ago, Airbrushes.com sent me a Lifecolor Lichens and Moss pack. At the time I had a quick look, tried it out on the canalside on Ruston Quays and then put it away as a useful product for the right project.

RQ hadn't provided much of a test and I thought the barn would do, so with the walls painted, it would out with the green stuff.

Mossing

In the pack are 6 bottles. 4 contain medium coarse flock powders, the other two are fixatives.These are both gloss - "lime" or "muddy" - and wash out of brushes with water. 

Work started by dabbing "muddy" fixer on the stone. It looks horrible but should then be covered with some flock. I used "Lush Plant" picked up with a knife and piled on the fixer. Ideally I'd have used a plastic spoon from an ice cream tub but can't find the one I kept. Must do something about that...

Anyway, once piled, the flock was rubbed off again to leave a thin coating. It seems to soak up the fixative and grab the wall almost instantly so fast work is possible. Working over paper allows excess flock to be returned to the bottle. 

I experimented with a darker flock (Rotten plant) but the colour variation jarred so I stuck to a single one. This might be the limitation of the system in that you can't blend colours (colors?) very easily. That said, the shades supplied work well and I'm very pleased with the results. The gloss fixative can still be seen but seems almost transparent so isn't a problem. A spray of matt varnish would cure it, at the same time you could add slight colour variation if using an airbrush. 

This has been a fun little project and I'm pleased with the result. OK, most of the work is in the excellent Skytrex casting, but that just means that anyone could have a building full of character on their layout. This, and comments made on these pages, have given me some idea for future projects, so watch this space.

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