Dirt!

In this post I'm going to show how I do some dirt effects. 

Starting with our stone base carefully paint some medium where you want the dirt. Then I'm going to use compressed chalk pastel and the edge of a hobby knife to scrape the chalk.

The pastels were designed for skin tones but it results in a lot of good browns. Specifically: Burnt Umber, Van Dyke Brown, Sepia (green hue), and others. You can pre-shave to make a mixture of the colors you want, or start with just one and see. 

Keep going and then tap off the excess and save it for later (I used Al foil)

There you have it, this is the result of Burnt Umber and Van Dyke brown.

Use tiny amounts of grass if you like.

Here's the critters.