Making trees
Here we see a tree armature with the candy tuft cut and glued to the sagebrush. It has not been painted yet.
In the first photo, I like the idea of two trees growing together. I built them on a small piece of wood, which was then dropped into the layout scene. If you are going to have a group of trees growing closely together, it is better to build the whole little scene on your workbench, start to finish, and then move it as a unit to the layout. Each tree should be built in place, with the branches interwoven.
The middle photo shows two trees, one before and one after, being painted. The paint IS neccessary no matter how you plan on finishing the trees. It makes sure that the interior color is consistant as well as giving a "glue-y" base for the first layer of foam. Using foam is a try and see activity, until you get what satisfies you and you then stick with that method.
The hairspray is used after the first layer of foam to lock in the foam and serve as a base for the next layer of foam... I sprinkle on some light colored foam on top to represent the sunshine effect.
For those of you wanting to represent fall colors, you can use both colored foam or spray paint... if you use an airbrush, you can control what you're doing much better, but unless you have a whole lot of trees to do at once, I find the clean up just doesn't justify the end result.
I hope that this has helped a bit for those of you that were interested. I will put together a tutorial on palm trees shortly... I have to actually build one and photograph the steps!
I need someone to tell me how to start a new thread, so that I don't keep adding to this one.
Here we see a tree armature with the candy tuft cut and glued to the sagebrush. It has not been painted yet.
In the first photo, I like the idea of two trees growing together. I built them on a small piece of wood, which was then dropped into the layout scene. If you are going to have a group of trees growing closely together, it is better to build the whole little scene on your workbench, start to finish, and then move it as a unit to the layout. Each tree should be built in place, with the branches interwoven.
The middle photo shows two trees, one before and one after, being painted. The paint IS neccessary no matter how you plan on finishing the trees. It makes sure that the interior color is consistant as well as giving a "glue-y" base for the first layer of foam. Using foam is a try and see activity, until you get what satisfies you and you then stick with that method.
The hairspray is used after the first layer of foam to lock in the foam and serve as a base for the next layer of foam... I sprinkle on some light colored foam on top to represent the sunshine effect.
For those of you wanting to represent fall colors, you can use both colored foam or spray paint... if you use an airbrush, you can control what you're doing much better, but unless you have a whole lot of trees to do at once, I find the clean up just doesn't justify the end result.
I hope that this has helped a bit for those of you that were interested. I will put together a tutorial on palm trees shortly... I have to actually build one and photograph the steps!
I need someone to tell me how to start a new thread, so that I don't keep adding to this one.
