Hemp Grass: The Hair Plug Method

Introduction

Ever built a field base, painted it and then said to yourself “Something’s missing”? Often times that something has to do with the vegetation on the base. When constructing a field, we generally turn to static grass, which leaves a lot to be desired unless you are trying to represent a mowed field. Like Steven Maes has done in his article about adding flowers to a field base (here); in this tutorial I will show you how to spruce up that static grass base. Instead of flowers I will be using everyone’s favorite: hemp twine.

Materials

For this technique you will need the following;

1. a piece of foam,
2. hemp twine (or any fine stranded twine),
3. white glue,
4. a needle file or similar object for poking holes in you base and foam,
5. and a pair of scissors.

Method

The technique I am demonstrating in this article is for adding grass clumps after the base has been painted and detailed. This can be done before painting and detailing by following the first step on the base itself.

Step 1
Using a needle file poke holes in your foam block 1/8” – ¼” (3-5mm) deep. I found that leaving no less than ¼” around each hole makes the later steps much easier.
Fill the holes with white glue, but don’t fill too many at a time to avoid making a mess.

Step 2
Cut small pieces of twine. The length is not too important just keep in mind that you will lose the depth of the holes you poked in the length of the grass.
Place the piece of twine in the dab of glue overflowing from the hole and press the twine into the hole with your needle file.
Fuss up the clump a bit to make it look a bit more natural.
With this technique you can get into rhythm and “plant” a whole crop in a relatively short time. Since this is the most labor-intensive step of the whole process, I found doing more than you need, will give you a nice stock for later projects.

Step 3
Once you have your desired crop, let it sit for a few hours to allow the white glue “root” to dry. After it is dry, you can paint it and transplant it. To transplant it, you simply grasp the clump as close to the foam as you can and pull straight up. You may need to trim any glue that was on top of the foam that has dried as a rim around the root.
Poke a hole in your base with you needle file and press the clump in and voila! Grass clump. It’s that easy, and as I said, you can make a lot clumps in a relatively short amount of time and really spruce up that grass field. I hope you find this article useful and happy modeling.