Ok here it is. Keep in mind this is a very rough first test. But I think it looks promising. In the upper right corner is the unpainted material, then (clockwise) orange, blue, and red. I applied quite a lot here for the color test, I guess normally you would probably apply a bit less. The coolest thing is that you can make as much as you like in the colors you like.
Hold on, I don't quite get what you did... You painted stuff to get the orange, blue, red? The grass in the top right, can you do a larger base of it so I can see what it is?
Ok maybe I wrote some stuff badly understandable, let me quickly re-iterate over it: The grass is regular Noch #07104 electrostatic grass, this one: https://www.noch.com/en/wild-grass-bright-green-6-mm-07104.html The stuff I applied as flower petals is this: https://www.noch.com/en/scatter-material-flower-meadow-08400.html I painted the #08400 scatter material by basically mixing it with a drop of my Army Painter acryllic paint. Then I put some PVA on the finished grass and touched the PVA drops with the painted #08400 scatter material. So the top right corner is just the #07104 with the unpainted #08400 on top, in the middle of the base (or on all my other grass bases in the blog) you can see the grass without the #08400. The other corners are the differently painted #08400.
Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Somehow I thought you had pre-made flock with flowers... Was wondering how you got it to stand up. Pretty cool, might have to investigate this...
Noch sells pre-made flower fields but those are mats. They also sell tufts but ~60 pieces (three colors usually so 20 each) are 15€ or so. Which is too restricted and too expensive IMO.
The ones I get on eBay are way cheaper than that and always come out looking nicely. I chop them into bits sometimes too.
Yeah of course there are cheaper tufts around. I haven't done the math properly but with the bag of that stuff being <2€ I think it could still be worth it, especially if you can use cheap house paint for the colors. But I think the biggest advantage is placing them on bigger grassy surfaces. No glueing them in, just touching the spots you want to place flowers with a brush of PVA and then with the right color of petals. If you have a rocky base and just want a few tufts then making them yourself probably isn't worth it even though the material is cheap as well. 50g of that gras is <8€ and you can make a few hundred tufts with that (using a plastic bag, drops of PVA glue on there, and the flock box). I've done that myself as well. It may be cheaper if you need a LOT of grass tufts (several hundred) with a broad range of colors.
Ok I tried the yellow again and it worked. The trick was to use some white first, wait two minutes and then put the particles into the yellow. With a thicker yellow paint it will work without that step in between but I was too lazy to get one.
This may be a silly question, but how did you get the grass to stick up?? What I mean is, the only 'grass flock" I have seen in stores just comes in a big bag of little blades of grass. It looks ok when spread on a base, but it gives the effect that all the grass is flattened down and lying at all sorts of weird angles. The effect would work better for hay than for grass. Do the grasses you use come in little clumps or something?
Thank you! The trick is: I use an electrostatic device. I use one manufactured by Noch, which is called the "Grassmaster" but you can also build a DIY version cheaply. In this video you can see how it works, it basically shoots the fibers into the PVA glue along electromagnetic field lines.
I should add it works a bit differently for wargaming purposes. You cannot put a nail into your bases so the trick I use is getting a sheet of aluminium foil and attaching the clamp to that. Then I put the base of the model near it.
Thanks! Can't wait to try it on some bases and create something really natural looking with that technique.
That is amazing. My mind is pretty blown, I had no clue this was a thing. If you ever do this again please take some in-progress pics so I can see your setup.
Sure! I do that grass stuff all the time, I'll just take some pictures of each stage next time for a little tutorial.