Groundwork demo test piece pt 3

Adding vegetation; here is some etched brass reeds, clipped from the sprue, and just polished at low speed with a brass bristle brush. The gets rids of any chemicals from etching, fingerprint oils from handling, and are now mounted in a clothes peg holder. Like all etched brass, this is two dimensional, and I wouldn't recommend using it for a scale above 1/35 or close to that. It would look thin, particularly on the reed stem and seed head. Adding a fine wire to the stem, and bulking up the seed head with a mixture of super glue and fine silt would work to fix that, though.
After I had polished it, I airbrushed a primer coat, then cleaned out the airbrush while waiting for the primer to dry.

Once that was done, I airbrushed a dark green to the 'plant', the brushed on some different shades of green for visual interest. Set aside to dry, while finishing the base.

Before adding the reed, and the log (which I hadn't glued down yet) I airbrushed the ground with various shades of brown, slightly lighter in some places, bit darker in others.

I then added 'flocking', a type of synthetic grass, to the base after brushing on some ground work glue ( type of water based glue, that doesn't dry "shiny"). , glued the 'log' down (just needed a touch of superglue) and the reed as well.

Please note, the masking tape is still on at this point, to protect the base from over spray, glue, handling and general work bench bumping.