How to - Making low level vegetation and bushes

Here is another tutorial-cum-explanation on how I make some of my terrain pieces.  Other techniques are available. ;-)

Today's topic is low bushes / ground cover / vegetation that is not quite as big as a tree. The pieces that I made were part of a series that I am specifically working on for a WWII Mediterranean/Crete-themed wargaming table, however, this technique could be used just as easily to create low vegetation for any theatre of war, historical period or even model train layouts (perhaps in the larger scales though).

The screenshot below, taken from Google Street View, shows several interesting aspects of terrain that I will end up modelling for my gaming table. (I checked the Google terms of use and it is apparently OK to use their images under licence as long as you credit their use.)  The image is of a street outside of Maroulas in Crete, so is representative of the area in which I am recreating for Operation Mercury.

One personal bugbear of mine is getting colours right. Much of the Mediterranean features red, or at least a reddish hue, soil and/or rocks, but often overlaid with fine, powdery white dust in areas that do not have any vegetative cover e.g. tracks or unmade roads. The photo above shows this colouring perfectly and is what I have tried to represent on my gaming table.

The next two Google Street View photos are from near Rethymno, Crete and show some scrubby/bushy vegetation, red rocky soil with some lighter rock outcroppings: perfect for modelling!

Materials

• PVA glue
• Natural fibre liner for a hanging basket - B&Q have some at less than a fiver
• Flock / scatter / static grass - all of them!  Loads of suppliers such Noch, Javis, Woodland Scenics etc
• Some spray adhesive / spray glue - there are lots of these suppliers available too. A quick Amazon search found this cheap spray.  It doesn't need to be the best product because it is only for sealing the flock
• Some sort of base to stick the bushes to e.g. MDF bases (or perhaps some left over extruded foam) - my friends at Great Escape Games stock a good selection of different size MDF bases

Tools

• A decent pair of scissors - gardening scissors are pretty heavy duty
• Some rawl plugs - these ones from B&Q come on strips that can be folded and clipped together to create a "stand" whilst you work on them
• A spray bottle like this one or an old paint brush for painting on PVA
• Optional - a pair of gloves...it gets messy!
• Optional - a dust mask to avoid breathing in any of the spray adhesive
• Optional - brown spray paint
• Optional - a hot glue gun and glue sticks. Alternatively you can embed your bushes into foam based terrain like I have done

Technique

This is another great starter project if you are getting into terrain; it is low cost, low effort and if it doesn't quite work out, chuck it away and try again.  It is really an outdoor kind of job though because as mentioned above, it gets a bit messy and you will also be spraying stuff.  Get your hanging basket liner:

Start off by tearing small strips of fibres from the liner. When I say "small strips", I'm not being too analytical about it, but a good pinch of fibres of between a few centimetres and 20 centimetres should be enough. You can experiment with different amounts - they create different sized bushes.

Pull out any of the thick, woody bits and discard them, then twist the centre of the fibres so that the middle of the strands become compressed together.

Before you cut the strip into two halves, clip on some rawl plugs like this, which will hold them together when you cut the strand into two pieces:

Give the newly-cut end a good twist again:

And then dip it into the undiluted PVA glue. Ensure that the twisted end gets a good soaking in the glue.

Then stuff it into the rawl plug.  You will notice that there is lots of glue spilling over the top...don't worry about that because it will disappear into the fibres.

If you have bought the type of rawl plugs that come on a strip, make sure that you have torn off all the plugs from one side of the strip, so that you can use the strip as a holder to put all your bushes in to dry.

Leave them to dry out completely and don't worry about them getting stuck in the rawl plugs: PVA does not stick well to plastic so they come out with a little bit of force once dried.  Once they have dried, pull them out.

At this point, you can start to get a bit creative and either trim the fibres into a specific shape, fan the fibres out into a particular shape, or do what you think looks like a bush from a reference photo. I've got two examples above: a shorter, bushier one on the left and a taller, thinner one on the right.

Next, don your gloves. If you don't like the colour of the fibres, this is the time to get your chosen spray paint out and give the trunk of your bush a quick spray. I left mine "naked" because I like the natural look of the fibres. Something that I will experiment with at some time in the future is coating the lower fibres using a ready mix filler to create more of a trunk.  A bit like the technique I used when creating olive trees in this tutorial.

Whether you use spray paint, or not, the next step is to use your spray bottle (filled with a mixture of PVA glue and water in a ratio of about 1 part glue to 9 parts water) and give the "branches" a good soaking. An alternative method here would be to brush on undiluted PVA.  Once coated in PVA, dip the branches into your chosen flock/scatter/static grass mix. There is no wrong choice here because they all create different textures and can represent different types of vegetation. One of my favourites is a mid green static grass, which looks like some sort of spiky-leafed bush.

After the first dipping, I then gave the bush a spray using the spray adhesive and then quickly sprinkled (rather than dipped) some more of the same flock/scatter/static grass over the bush to add more leaves. If you want a more sparsely covered bush, then skip this second application. Or if you want a really well covered bush, go back for a third go.

The final step is to give it a dusting with the spray adhesive again, which has the effect of fixing the flock fibres in place.

If you have the rawl plug stand/holder, it is really useful to be able to place your still wet-with-glue bushes upright until they dry. If you lay them down or handle the wet flock, it will ruin the leafy look and become matted.  Here is a selection of different flocks and scatters standing up until the spray adhesive has dried out.

Finally, you need to base them. You can either use a hot glue gun to affix them to something like an MDF base, or as I have chosen to do, mount them within some other terrain pieces. The photo below is a steep hill made from extruded foam, covered in polyfilla and then textured using the same method as described in my table-making blog. I drilled a suitable sized hole, dabbed in a bit of PVA glue and then pushed the trunks into the hole.

The last point to note is that bushes are rarely uniform in shape (another bugbear of mine about a lot of pre-bought terrain, though things have improved significantly over the last couple of years), so I'm all in favour of randomly poking out branches.  If you are the sort of gentleman wargamer who lets an untidy thatch bother you, then get your scissors and give the bush a quick trim. ;-)

Here's another shot of some low vegetation embedded into terrain pieces.  I'll post up another how-to on how I created some of those pieces soon.