Baking experts help! Fondant icing colour question!

[MinesaLattecino]

So I've sent myself a task of making a How to Train Your Dragon CAke...
I'm wondering how I can vary the colour of fondant icing to make more natural rocks/grass etc like the have here - is that done in the icing making stage, or blended in/painted on afterwards? I'm using ready made fondant.

[Toucancan]

I would say it's in the icing making stage, not painted on. You knead the colouring into the fondant and then shape the rocks/grass.

Use gel colours, not the cheap supermarket ones - those are truly rubbish! in say black/grey, and a green. Take a lump of white fondant and knead in a tiny bit of colouring. I usually dip a cocktail stick into the gel, dab it on to the icing, then knead until well mixed. You can always add more colour but it's harder to correct if you overdo it. Less is more.

To get the natural-looking colour gradients, make up a lump of the palest colour you want, then split half of that away and mix more colouring in. Split that in half again and make it even darker. So you have three lumps, the smallest being the darkest.

Hope that makes sense!

[Toucancan]

Sorry meant to clarify - you can do this with ready made fondant.

Nice cake btw it looks fun to make!

[MinesaLattecino]

In the end I had some different coloured greens and some grey/black/white offcuts of ready rolled icing, so rolled them up together in a sort of marbled /PlayDoh kind of way and it worked really well!