Some More Linear Objects

Continuing with terrain features on lolly sticks, today I made rustic fences, hedges and also some painted fences suitable for city boulevards and town squares.

If I never whittle another lolly stick it'll be too soon...

I chamfered and whittled off loads of lolly sticks, some of which had been cut to different lengths for variation this time and trimmed about 1.5m altogether from the aviary wire to see me out with the job in hand. The first lot of fences this time were going to be a more rustic style, bare wood or creosoted finish in Humbrol 98 with the usual Humbrol 29 dark earth and grass mix scatter.

Rustic post & rail fences

The thinnest possible strips were trimmed off green scourer pad for hedges. I used this instead of pipe cleaners as it seems you can only get the chenille variety these days and you can see the twisted wire all too easily compared to the fluffier cotton type that was around 30 years ago. The hedge bases had to be painted brown first as the green pad was open enough to see the ground. 

Hedge clipping

Various Humbrol greens and browns were sloshed on the glued down hedges (which had a good texture but were a horrible blue-green) and different scatters applied until there was a good variation of foliage.

The smartly painted city boulevard central reservations or town square railings differed only in that the grassy area was painted & flocked, then the edge where the stone kerb was going to be had to scraped clean with a scalpel. 

French blue town railings

I've also been experimenting with a fine tweed pattern polyester from charity shop clothes to use as texture for cobbled streets. So far I have sprayed it brown to take the contrast out of the herringbone design and when it is actually in use it will have all sorts of oil pastel shading across the surface. 

Various post & rail fences and hedge

The 'cobbled road' is still too uniform in spite of the amount of spray paint I put on it so I went over a bit of road gently with light yellow ochre and light red-brown oil pastels sideways on to prevent harsh lines and streaks.

With light yellow ochre and re-brown oil pastels

The texture of the cloth meant that I now got the impression of an even pattern of regularly laid cobblestones but without really seeing that it is actually out of scale and herringbone all over.