Quick Easy Tall Grass

[Tomkat]

Use an old cheap paint brush, color the bristles with markers, cut to size, make hole & plant.

[ianacole]

Fantastic!

[Railrunner130]

Very nice! I may have to add this trick to my bag...

[nickf06gli]

This is what makes this site so awesome, I paid $4.39 for stuff that is impossible to work with (equivelent to a quarter of that brush, thanks for the tip!

On another note I spray paint alot of stuff, It gives it a neat look, especially on trees

[Motley]

Wow! That is the best tip ever! Thanks, I'm using a lot of tall grass on my layout. Defiantly gonna use this method from now on.

[35tac]

Yep, thats a good one.
Thanks
Wayne

[Outback]

I've been doing this for years but also and primarily using manila and other various forms of natural (or at least non shiney plastic/nylon) rope materials. It is kind of a staple for doing a railway modelled in a prairie landscape. It is easy, effective and very cheap by MR standards - meaning monetarily. You can buy a lifetime supply of manila for a few measily dollars compared to MR grass.

Simply cut and glue for dead or fall grass, or dye, cut and glue for coloured or fresh grasses. One of the best most effective tall grass modelling techniques out there.

I have always had a low (pretty much non existant) budget for trains so had to learn to be resourceful from an early age. There are many natural and free sources for scenicking materials out there if a person is willing to look, research or just plain try different things. Your hard earned money can then be directed to more important things like rolling stock or locomotives.

Another great natural ingredient is what I call Old Man's Beard (a kind of tall yellow flower that goes to a white fuzz in fall) - the small inner leaves of it make great HO guage cat tails and bull rushes...

If I had the time I would would make a list of useful dried plants for MR scenery, but I would have to research all the proper names for them and post pics for ID if it was going to be any use to anyone. A big task. If I remember some of them I'll try to post them here for referance.

Good topic!

[Outback]

Here's a quick pic from an area undergoing scenicking...



I model early spring or early fall depending on how you want to look at it. I like yellows and browns more than greens and colours, hence my yellowed tall grass - plain rope no colouring.

Also in the pic you may notice real natural moss, dried coffee grounds as a base for depth, real black dirt sifted to various scales as with the ballast in this scene made from sifted cat litter to represent fresh white limestone as used around eastern Manitoba for various purposes (we use what we can access locally for the most part). The rest of the line utilises sandbox sand for ballast and sometimes a mix of various sifted scaled materials to represent various repairs/re-balasts over the years. Most newer works using the white ballast as seen here.

Also bits of larger stones sifted from other materials, weed roots for dead trees, sifted potting soil wooden bits for dead fall and such, and some lichen bits n pieces for small bushes/scrub. The only man made scenic materials in this pic are the bits of green foam for small thickish bushes and a couple bits of that fuzzy stuff used on trees and the two pines in the distance - that need some toning down in the shine department lol.

[PNKFLOYD]

For the price of the Woodland Scenic components in that diorama, I could buy a brand new paint brush and a 50 foot manila rope.
Then, I could scenic a 100 square foot area.

Thanks for sharing the ideas!

[IowaFarmBoy]

I tried this with a couple of brand new cheapie brushes that I had and the results were every bit as good as has already been mentioned. I then tried another higher quality brush and the results were nowhere near as good. The cheapie brushes had some sort of natural bristles and the higher quality brush had nylon or some other plastic bristles which did not color nearly as well. The cheapie brushes colored all the way through all the bristles but the nylon did not. The outer bristles were colored but many inner bristles had much less color. The natural bristles were matte or flat finished but the nylon bristles were shiny asnd almost glossy which gave an unrealistic appearance to them. In fairness to the more expensive brush it probably had far more bristles in it's 1" width than one of the 3" cheapies had in total.

Additionally I was careful when I removed the brush handles and with a bit of judicious sawing for angle and push notch I will convert them into push sticks for my new (to me) Dremel table saw.