vtsaogames,
The thought of trying to break up the solid look of a green-colored game mat came to me when I was doing a lot of Bolt Action gaming using the excellent Games Workshop Battle Mats for my tabletop covering (unfortunately the GW Battle Mats are no longer being retailed now). I wondered if I could use regular household bleach sprayed from a spray bottle to emit droplets onto the surface of a game mat, which would then discolor the dye in the mat fabric to create a random pattern of [bleached-out] color.
For a local gamers forum I posted a brief "tutorial" on the simplest part of the process, which I called (tongue-in-cheek) "Splatter Tech", because it actually was so very low tech, and easy to do.
I first tested my spraying technique on a small sample section, and once confident I wasn't going to ruin my Battle Mats in the process, I did this treatment on four other mats.
Here's a zoomed-in view of an area roughly a 2 ft. X 2 ft. of an untreated section of GW mat:
Roughly the same area sprayed with bleach, and after the droplets have dried, and bleached-out some of the color:
Now here's a closer, clearer view (taken indoors) of around a 1 ft. area of treated mat:
This spray/splattered bleach process can be used with mats that are also made of static grass affixed to a paper backing, which are marketed by hobby companies that sell scale terrain for making model railroad layouts (these are referred to as railroad grass mats), and are sold by companies like Busch, Heiki, and Noch. I've only tried this technique on one Woodland Scenics mat, their Desert mat, which didn't work because the sand texture of the mat won't discolor with bleach, so I can only attest that it works on the GW mats, and with static grass type railroad mats by those three manufacturers above.
After making a few mats to create only the splatter effect from the bleach, I thought to experiment with intensifying/concentrating the application of the spray, and to totally cover select areas to see the results. The results were a complete, but pretty homogeneous discoloration of the green color from the mat area, rendering a yellow hue to the treated parts. At that point I realized I could make fields, and roads by the color-contrasting effects of spraying bleach more completely onto desired areas. Of course, this requires the areas not desired to be bleach out, to be covered with paper to prevent contact with the spray bleach. So for yellow-colored crop fields, the outlines of simple squares or rectangles can be taped out, and the area around them protected with paper, and then a complete application of bleach is sprayed. Once dry, the paper is removed, and the tape pulled away, revealing bleach-out field areas that are now permanent to the game mat. The same technique of taping out the outline (edges) of a desired road network, while protecting the desired non-bleach areas with paper, can produce a permanent road net "image" on a game mat, like the one pictured at the beginning of this thread.
Lastly though, a fair warning and disclaimer of responsibility if anyone should want to try this 'Splatter Tech' themselves – of course bleach can ruin your clothing, home fabrics, and if over applied maybe even ruin your grass railroad mat – so go slow, think ahead of what you don't want to come in contact with the spray [or spilled] bleach chemical.
