Getting roads to just ruddy lay flat

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Project Entry by redvers

Attempt 1

June 17, 2020

Tutoring 16

Skill 12

Idea 16

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In hindsight, I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking when I tried this approach. So spoiler alert, this was a complete failure.

Looking at my teddy bear fur gaming mat and seeing its flexible properties, my first thought was to use the off cuts from the mat to make the roads. After all, painted up correctly, it would blend better into the mat and improve the immersion.

Here’s a sample of the fur before I got started with it:

The skin of a teddy bear

Clearly painting the fur to look like a road would look awful. I somehow thought though that applying a decorator’s caulk mix would look a whole lot better.

To make the mix, I squeezed some caulk into a tub with some brown acrylic paint. In my mind, I was aiming for a dirt road.

On the plus side, the caulk mixed very well. I applied it to the fur using a tongue depressor and sprinkled some sand over the top to try to create some texture. I left it to dry.

Here’s the results:

A mess

A close up of a mess

As you can see, it looks nothing like a dirt road. The caulk got matted into the long fur, clumped and didn’t sit flat. The sand just looks like sand sprinkled on the top.

In hindsight, this result was all very predictable. So we’ll chalk this one down to experience and talk no more about it.