Wattle I Do Now? Finishing off my Wattle Fencing

Well thanks to a lot of extra work it's taken a lot longer than I had hoped to find time to finish off my four sections of wattle fencing.  However, I've had some time today to complete the project.  If all goes to plan, I'll be making more sections, but for now I wanted to complete the four I had started to check I was happy with how they were going to look.  You can read about how I made these wattle fences here.
I undercoated the fences with a mixture of black and brown acrylic.  I added a little water to the mix when it came to covering the bases as it helps the paint to both soak into the sand and any crevices in the base.  This of course takes a lot longer to dry than normal, so i tend to leave it a few hours.  In this case they'd been left about a fortnight, so I considered them suitably dry and moved on to the next stage...!
When we think of wooden fences, we often assume that they should be painted a nice mid-brown.  Sounds right, but it's not.  Weathered wood tends to go grey sooner than you'd think.  And as we're making scenery suitable for anything from the ancient to medieval period, we're not going to find any locals making use of Ronseal's range of colours to convince us otherwise.  So I began by dry brushing my wattle with a few shades of grey.  Fifty would be way too excessive.  I think I settled for four, each progressively lighter than the last.  The final two were focused around the upright posts to accentuate the woven structure of the fencing.  

Dry brushing can be a messy affair, especially when using a larger brush for a piece of scenery like this.  I painted the fencing first as I knew it was highly likely I'd have a few overly extravagant flicks of the brush onto the bases.  So having painted the wattle, I progressed to dry brush the earth.  At this point I don't worry about the presence of stones.  I just try to give a good coverage of the base as a whole.  
I then take a smaller brush and dry brush the stones with a dark grey.  I then have a lighter pass over the stones, followed by a third and final dry brushed highlight.
These need to be left to dry.  Thankfully for nowhere near as long as the undercoat was...

The next stage is one I really enjoy.  Flocking.  It all begins with a generous and cautiously placed amount of PVA as you can see in the next photo.
I then take an old small brush and spread this around the base, leaving most of the stones untouched as well as some of the soil.  I try to make sure I get the glue along the edge of the base.  I want to make it look as much a part of the boards as possible.  of course, when it's done it ends up looking like this...
..which makes me all the more determined to have a go at making some snow boards one day. it then goes into my green blended turf from Woodland Scenics.  I let it sit there for a minute or two to make sure it's properly covered before lifting it out and tapping off any excess.  Some flock will insist on clinging onto parts f the model that have n glue on it.  I keep a trusty brush with soft bristles to hand for such an occasion.
The four flocked sections now look like this.
Now comes the fun part!  I like to add clumps of static flock to sections of the bases.  I should probably point out that this is exactly the same process I use for basing my miniatures.  I'm also using the same colours of flock as I have on my gaming surfaces.  It helps tie everything together on the gaming surface.

I use my old brush to dab on some PVA and then sit my fence on the tub of static grass.  This stuff is Noch's Spring Grass.  I then use my tweezers to pick up a wodge of flock and dab it into the glue. You might think it'd flatten the grass, but it doesn't.  I'm relying here on the static nature of the flock that remains in the tweezers to make the fibers stand up.  I've not been disappointed yet.  In fact i was so sure of my method that I did my best to take a photo of my efforts.  This wasn't easy as it meant balancing and taking the photo with my left hand whilst applying the static with my right hand.  So my apologies for the shaky nature of this next photo...!
Here's how all four bases looked at this stage.

Finally, I added even fewer blobs of PVA to the bases and stick on Woodland Scenics underbush.  This achieves the following look to the bases.


My only problem with these photos is the conflicting light coming from my light and the light that came through my windows in dribs and drabs as the morning went on.
I took this final photo relying solely on natural light. it certainly managed to accentuate the grey.  Perhaps a little too much.

And then, because I clearly wasn't completely happy with the result, I waited until it began to get dark and positioned them on my paint station in my favourite lighting spot and took these pictures.  

I'm really happy with the results, although I think if I had the cash, I'd go for a slightly thinner wire for a more realistic look.  At the end of the day though, I think that's being a bit nitpicky.  I'd love to hear your thoughts though, so please add your comments below!
As always, thanks for stopping by!

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