Hi there all.
I am building a mountain/hill. I have built up my styrofoam and have covered it with plaster. What is the best material to make a realistic mountain/hill and how do I go about it?
Thank you all
The mountain that I have built was made of arcs of reinforced plywood, covered with heavy screen wire and Hydrocal plaster. I have an under layout access to the tracks beneath the mountain. It sounds like you have already constructed your mountain of Styrofoam. One good option is to make the entire mountain removable, (if there are tracks beneath it.) My mountains are at a stage where one would add Sculptmold plaster, (in order to carve in rock strata), before weathering the mountain with a primer and various shades of brown, or grey. Another advantage of using styrofoam is that you, merely, have to punch or drill holes, in order to "plant a forest canopy". At present, I am in the process of making some 300-400 wooden skewer trunks ( cut into 3 varied lengths and stained greyish brown. I used a pencil sharpener to sharpen both ends, before staining them, (in bulk). I pull apart cheap blue furnace filters, into two layers, and then spray them with brown ,(or black), then cut them into rough 1 to1 1/2" strips, which are then cut into rough squares.About 5 of these squares are pushed onto the sharpened stained skewer. I use scrap fuzzy pieces of filter to form the cap of each tree. One can, then, use a sharp scissors to trim the branches into rough circles.I have bottles of WS Coarse Turf, in various shades of green, for Summer foliage, and yellow, orange, and red for Fall foliage trees. Get cans of Spray Fixative, or Tacky spray adhesive. Spray each tree with adhesive and sprinkle on various shades of green or Fall colored foam. I then push the sharpened end into a large rectangular scrap of stryrofoam, so that the adhesive can dry on each tree (without having them stick together). You can use an awl to start the hole in the styrofoam mountain. Get pictures of hillsides to get the "feel" of what they look like. I use SceniKing paper sectional banners, to show "forced perspective". The 7"x11" sections are glued to the Luan backdrop with a giant glue stick.(which makes the sections removable) Buy a bag of Supertrees,and use pieces for Winter and early Spring, (or dead trees). Note that there may be rock outcrops, and conifer trees intermixed with deciduous trees. I replant an entire forest with Summer or Fall colored trees, (according to the season). On our Historical Museum layout, the trees on the four walls replicate the four seasons. Bob Hahn
The background blue color of the sky was color matched to the color of the tops of the SceniKing photos. The background and extra clouds were painted in, before gluing on the SceniKing sections. In order to add to the "forced perspective", the rear train is of N scale, (on a slightly raised track), and the foreground train is HO scale. At first I had painted a mountainous background, but felt that the low distant hills (on the SceniKing phpotos), gave a better feel of "forced perspective".
Click on the photo, in order to enlarge it. Then, to see photos of the rest of my layout, "click" on the end photos, (to the right)!
I create an uneven, naturally contoured surface first. If you look at a natural hill, you will see that the fine-scale surface has very few even, geometrical shapes. Large flat areas are uncommon, except perhaps in deserts. Slopes aren't flat either, but quite irregular. So, I cut out bits of foam from one place and glue them back in somewhere else. I use plaster cloth to smooth the transitions.
Next, I coat everything with a thin layer of Gypsolite. This is a gritty plaster material, which adds fine-scale roughness to the surface. I squirt in a little dark-brown acrylic craft paint to the batch, which gives me a tan-colored surface. After it hardens, I make a thin wash of olive green paint, and use a brush to create a camouflage pattern on the surface:
In the picture above, you can see a rock casting off to the right that's been worked into the surface. There's also a "black hole" which is a shallow depression to be filled with Envirotex for a small pond.
After all of this is dry, I use a brush and paint the surface with white glue, thinned 1 part glue to 3 parts water. Then I sprinkle on turf. I use a brown turf over the tan areas, and a greener turf on the green area, but I'm not too fussy about that. I try to use several different turf colors to get a more natural look. Next, I add flocking and ground foam for shrubbery and low brush, and finally some trees:
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I posted in progress pics of my large hill in the current WPF. It is the first entry.
I built it by forming the contours with a web of cardboard strips and covering with red resin paper. This is coated with joint comound and or plaster to create a hard shell. It sounds like you have already progressed to the stage of having built your landform so I'm guessing you are asking about the finished layers. First thing to know is what type of mountain are you trying to model. The Appalachians are generally tree covered with little or no ground showing. For that I use polyfiber trees for most of the hillside where only the treetops are visible and use Woodland Scenics and Super Trees near the front where the trunks and branches are seen. If you are modeling western mountains, there will be less trees so some of the mountain surface will be visible so you will want to put down several layers of ground foam, brush, bushes etc. You probably want to model some rock faces and outcroppings as well. For this many modelers use rock molds which I have done in the past. Lately I have been sculpting my rock faces with Sculptamold which has a nice rocky texture and a long working time allowing me to keep shaping it until it looks right. Rock color can vary greatly but you'll want to put in several layers of color. Rock is rarely one solid color. You'll want a base layer and then one or more layers of wash. You should be able to find lots of pictures of whatever mountain region you are modeling on line and just try to mimic that. The great thing about scenery is that if it doesn't look right, you can just keep at it until it does without harming anything.