Snowman
Well-Known Member
Another classic alternative to water+glue is water+Matte Medium. "Mod Podge" is one, but there are others, such as Liquitex more often aimed at the artists market. Available in several varieties of finish, as with paints: Matte, semi-gloss, gloss.... Unless you are directly modeling water itself--or perhaps modeling a VERY soggy day--you will want to use matte for anything soil/dirt/ballast related. Thin with water which has been mixed with a wetting agent, aka "thin water," and apply with an eyedropper. No reason you can't reapply later, too, if the holding power isn't quite enough.
Handy wetting agents are grease-fighting dishsoaps ("Dawn") and drugstore-type rubbing alcohol.
Easy enough to fine tune your method with a few index cards. Just spread your (real) soil/ballast on the cards and apply some of the thinned matte solutions to see what works for you--the tradeoff between "super-thick," but which balls up on the surface of the dirt, and "too thin," which drops into the gaps between the grains, but which doesn't have enough holding power. There is a happy..........
...........medium.
You might also experiment with painting underneath your ground cover first--a color darker than your soil will be what you want, as where it shows through would be shadowed and not in bright sunlight.
Handy wetting agents are grease-fighting dishsoaps ("Dawn") and drugstore-type rubbing alcohol.
Easy enough to fine tune your method with a few index cards. Just spread your (real) soil/ballast on the cards and apply some of the thinned matte solutions to see what works for you--the tradeoff between "super-thick," but which balls up on the surface of the dirt, and "too thin," which drops into the gaps between the grains, but which doesn't have enough holding power. There is a happy..........
...........medium.
You might also experiment with painting underneath your ground cover first--a color darker than your soil will be what you want, as where it shows through would be shadowed and not in bright sunlight.
