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  Modeling  Tips & Techniques  Creating Moss and Lichen

Creating Moss and Lichen

 Michael Fichtenmayer  Wednesday, February 6, 2008  Tips & Techniques

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 As I gain experience in this hobby I find myself trying more and more to recreate nature in various scales. This involves plenty of
research on modeling materials and real life examples/images. For my current project I’d like to place some moss and lichen on
some rocks. Just a small amount, but it’s become a big learning process. As usual I went in search of examples and such done by
other modelers to see the good and bad and learn from it. I didn’t find a whole lot aside from people using the ground up foam or
real moss… neither of which looked like what I wanted, but the real moss looked to make some nice additional greenery.

For this article, I’ll avoid my trial and error processes and focus on the technique I stumbled upon while mixing various
concoctions. You’ll need the following supplies for this method:

Model car interior flocking (gray)

Baking Soda

Cheap-O acrylics

Black India Ink

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 I started o my making some rocks using the Woodland Scenics rock molds and plaster of paris. These rocks were gived a few
washes with diluted black india ink and a wash of russian earth MIG pigment for a little color.

Next it was time to add the lichen. Lichen o en appear as pale white/blue/green plants on the surface of rocks. They look a little
like mold in some of the images. To recreate this I applied random layers of white, gray and pale sage green acrylic with a small
piece of sponge.

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 Now it’s time to make the moss. You start by mixing equal parts of baking soda and flocking. Then you add just enough green
acrylic paint to make a thin paste about the consistency of white glue. Add a little ink to this for a deeper/less saturated color.

This mixture can be applied two ways. First I took the same so brush I mixed it with and dabbed in on thinly in spots. This gives
you a light covering. I then took a toothpick and applied small glops of the moss mix on the tops of the rocks and over the thin
areas. This gives you the thicker heavier moss look. The mix will look a little solid, but this is where the magic of the baking soda
happens. Originally I added the baking soda and no flocking. The BS was just for bulk. That happened while drying however is
small gas bubbles forming adding texture. With the addition of the flocking the texture went from bubbly to flu y in a scale moss
kind of way.

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 Let this mixture dry completely as acrylics of this variety can lighten or darken while drying. When dry you can add thin acrylic
washes of brown (for the not-so healthy spots and roots. Then once the wash dries, you can drybrush the moss a little using a color
that’s only slightly lighter than the dried moss mix to bring out the texture and tease out the flocking flu . Here’s the final results.

This is the basics of my method, but I’ll be playing with di erent colors and di erent add-ins later for di erent projects.

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   Groundwork, Lichen, Moss, Pigments, Tips & Techniques, Tutorial.  Bookmark.

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