Finally - Some Progress!!!!

Well....it's July in Texas. Time to get motivated for anything that keeps you in air conditioned  comfort. So, that means time to stop procrastinating on starting the scenery. A couple of months ago, in an unusual spurt of energy, I tried out  the hydrocal soaked paper towels over screen on a curve leaving  Willow Tree.   I was very displeased with the result.   So this time  I'm trying Sculptamold  (a cellulose based modeling compound similar  to papier mache) I spent an hour in the big box home improvement store trying to  choose a brown latex paint color that i thought would be a good base  for the soil in the area I'm modeling.  You can mix watered down paint  with the Scuptamold to avoid white areas, should the top layer get  chipped. Here is the test area before sculptamold (the white area on the curve  is the plaster-soaked towel experiment): I added very little support under the screen, so it took 4 separate  applications over a 1 week period, letting each one set for a couple  of days to build up strength.   The results were much more acceptable.  A little on the coarse side,  but a little sanding should smooth everything out.  My choice of  brown for earth color ended up being a little lighter than I was  hoping....but I guess it's better to be too light than too dark.   Painting during later scenery stages can darken it up. The brown doesn't really photograph too well.... but here are the results: Guess I better stock up on the Sculptamold... summer has a long way to go!