Making scenery: CLIMBING PLANTS

This is a model of an overgrown ruin. I wanted the walls to look as though they had been prized apart by growing plants. Creepers could also be used to hide faults in the model. This is meant to be a ruin in ancient Egypt, so I wanted something that looked like a dry dead twisted woody old gnarled creeper. I used wool, the sort that you might knit a sweater out of. I put loads of PVA glue on the wool, and pressed it onto the model. I splayed out the end of the lengths of wool and pressed them down onto the surface of the stone. It dried stiff and hard, and could be painted brown and dry brushed a very pale sand colour, and this is the result.

For a less dead-looking version, you could add some flock. One of my model houses developed a crack on its pantiled roof, so I piped a length of brown acrylic mastic down the crack, and added a couple of lines branching off from this, and then added green leafy flock. Small lines of greenery don’t need a mastic core. The “ivy” hid the crack nicely. I remembered to add a thick streak of mastic on the building’s wall, representing the lower trunk leading to the roof.

This is plastic aquarium plant. The plants come in bunches, and are very flexible. They are designed to float upright, and sway in the current. I simply cut a length, put on loads of PVA glue, and pressed it into place and waited for it to dry stiff and hard. It was a bit too strongly green, so I dry-brushed it with a pale green mixed with sand-coloured paint.