I am thinking about useing copper penny because it simulates the dirt under the turf. rocky mountins.
no, i will be useing the sandy brown color
If your modeled area has a lot of exposed dirt, I’d use the color closest to the dirt color. In my area of the Northeast most of the soil is very dark, but is covered with grass. The color you see under the green is more the tan of the dead grass thatch just above the soil surface. That’s why I use a tan color. If I do a plowed field, I will use a much darker color.
Good luck,
Richard
it is a pine forest.
I don’t think the color really matters that much. Any color of brown or tan should do. All you want to do is prevent the blue, pink, or construction material color from showing through, if you missed a spot, after you apply the base cover of ground foam / scenery material.
If you are planning on painting the layout base, then just sticking in some trees for your forest, it will not look very real no matter what color of paint you use.
i am useing ground cover and then i am going to put the pine trees and other stuff in.
color matter because there is a correct color for each area like if you are modeling a layout in southern mn where i am from you want to use a more yellow brown color because the sandstone and limstone bluffs. like the sandy brown color will work for the rockey mountins and i found that out by looking at a photo of the rocky mountins
The point isn’t that soil colors don’t vary from place to place. They do, and we all know that. The previous posters were making 2 points:
-
The actual color you paint your layout doesn’t matter (as much), because most of the time, when you look at the ground, you aren’t seeing bare soil anyway; and
-
No matter how close your paint matches the native soil color, your layout will look lousy if you don’t add ground cover in most places. A freshly plowed field is one of the few places you would expect to have NO ground cover.
ah,
You should go outside and get some pine needles (if you can) and break them into tiny little pieces, then sprinkle then on the ground below the trees. Then it would REALLY look realistic!