In Progress » Shadow of the Minotaur » Attack My Pretty!

At this point the beastie is just about finished. A few touch-ups here and there and he’s complete. I still however need to make the Druid “pilot” and finish the base grass. First things first though…

Moss! Before applying the moss I first mixed up some of Mig Productions new Fantasy Pigments to create a moss color for a base coloring. Mixing together 50/50 Zombie Green and Graveyard Dirt gave me the color I wanted. I applied this with an old brush and then airbrushed on a thin coat of the pigment fixer to seal it.

After this I applied the moss Per’s way as shown in my last update. Basically you’re mixing Fine Turf, White Glue and water then eye-dropping and drybrushing (when dry) paint to tint.

Once the moss was done I began applying the grass using Jute twine as seen in my tutorial here. The only difference between that tutorial and this is that all of my Jute was dyed a deep green with thinned cheap acrylic paint. I also applied roots as seen in the Dagobah Diorama to some of the creature. I want to add more to his right hand side as I forgot about that.

It took about 4-5 hours of unsteady work to apply all of the grass. Most of the grass clumps were about .5″ long give or take. Randomness is best here. Longer grass was used near the edges so that I could drape and curl it up nicer and shorter was used in the “chariot”.

When the grass was dry I teased it up, trimmed any long out of place strands and masked all the stone in aluminum foil. I thought for a while about how to get nice little scale flowers without using REAL flowers that would fade/become brittle over time. Woodland Scenics makes a flower mix which comes on a card with 4 individually packed colors. Red, White, Yellow, and Orange. The Red, Yellow and Orange are just very fine turf. I had hoped the white was too, but it was basically their flake snow. I was annoyed at first as I wanted purple, pink and white clover (as I see EVERYWHERE this time of year) and figured the turf could be easily dyed. As it turns out though, the flake snow makes AWESOME flowers and weeds.

Just pour some of the WS snow into a cup and add a few drops of thinned acrylic paint and mix. After it dries you have colored flower flakes. Fantastic! Store leftovers in some small zipper bags for future use.

First I sprinkled green and yellow-grass turf onto the grass as well as some of the green flower mix. This was all to make the grass look more like thick leafy weeds. I misted on some thinned matte medium to stick the weeds on and then sprinkled on my flower mixes to simulate  clover and wildflowers. Again, randomness is best.