Textures. That was what I needed to apply next. With some of the original plants, and with quite some I have seen since online, it always bugged me when you saw "polystyrene balls with cocktail sticks" and not "alien plants". When now thinking about this topic, I nailed it down to:
- no visible polystyrene bubbles
- no visible perfect ball shapes stacked onto one another
- different textures
To achieve this, I started by covering some plants in thinly rolled airdrying clay, on others I carved structure onto the substructure with the same clay.
On one plant, I burned out the top with a match stick (in a well ventilated area of course, such fumes are toxic).
To cover the rest of the plants, I mixed gesso primer with tile grout; and another batch where I added sand to the mixture for a grainier effect.
