After Tony Koster’s tree article in MR a few months ago, I decided to give it a try. I went on a walk thru the fields and ski slopes around my house, with a pair of diagonal cutters, and harvested a couple of plastic shopping bags full of decent looking weeds.
I picked quite a big bunch of 'em.
I made a simple tree rack to hold them while painting.
And give 'em a coat of light gray auto primer. I don’t have a spray booth. Out of doors works OK for me.
Then do the hair spray and sprinkle with ground foam thing and plant them on the layout. I used an awl to poke deep holes in the foamboard. Stick the tree trunk in the hole, no glue, the foam reforms, closing the hole tightly about the tree trunk. Here is a small grove at the Bunkbed Tunnel entrance.
A single hero tree filling an unused corner.
A shade tree beside the big house.
Some scruffy small tree/shrubs along the big liftout section.
'Tis the season. Just saw my first golden rod blooms, which have been shown often here. Have noticed another weed that looks promising, as well as one I have used before that is nearing time to harvest. A couple of years ago I planted some sedum, harvested a couple of times, but have yet to get any fixed up an on the layout.
I like your idea of spraying the weeds gray. The natural plant color is usually a brown, whereas most trees are a gray. Will give it a try when planting time comes around.
I am perfectly aware, how difficult it is to make realistic looking trees and that´s why I have so far shunned away from it. Are you happy with the trees you have made? Without wanting to be a PITA, but I think they lack “body”
Trees look like this:
Maybe you can enhance them by adding the dreaded moss to them and then sprinkle the ground foam over them.
Well, they are good enough to plant on the layout. You are right, the trunks want to be thicker, and they want more twigs and leaves to fill out the sillouette and round out the tree. I tried some woodier twig trimmings. They had the desired thickness in the trunk, but the hairspray and ground foam didn’t stick well, and the result just looked like a twig.
Good start, Dave, and the first step is always the most difficult. Once you’ve made it, it becomes a lot easier to expand on the theme.
Plant heads of various types are useful scenic items, and low bushes are one area where you don’t need to do a lot to improve them. Not sure what these are, but there’s some spirea flowers and some cut-down golden rod. I simply dipped 'em in some clear urethane that was no longer needed, then threw some ground foam onto them. Stick 'em in a piece of extruded foam to allow them to dry, then plant them on the layout:
Here’s an over-all shot of the same area. There are a couple of slightly larger trees to the right, but those along the backdrop and on the slope above the tunnel portal are simply blocks of cushion foam, painted dark green and then covered with polyfibre. This was sprayed with cheap hairspray, then sprinkled with ground foam:
These are, I think, golden rod, with the leaves and other unnecessary bits removed. I plan on re-doing these by adding polyfibre and more ground foam, but I’ve included their ugliness here to demonstrate one way of thickening-up their spindly “trunks”. I used florists tape to bind several stalks together - it comes in many colours, ands I probably should have used a dark grey rather than brown. [:$] It’s available at craft stores, and is self-adhesive, much like friction tape - you can see it best on the middle of the three background trees:
These young trees are from a bush which grows wild around this part of southern Ontario, and probably everywhere with a similar temperate climate, but I do
I also put a few stalks together either with tape or very fine wire. I then dip them in a thick mix of Plaster Of Paris up to where the first branch in the trunk is. After the plaster dries I hit it with the paint. I think they look really good as the plaster hides any evidence of multiple trunks being joined together.
The plaster of paris is a good idea. I use what they call floral tape to put 2-3 branches together then dipping it in the plaster would look great. What you guys have done is great, I do some track work and then switch to scenery it keeps the hobby moving along. Jim.
Hello nice tree’s Dave I had some like that. They did not make to move to the new layout. I need to make some more. I did make some out of sunflower roots. They are made with fine turf and hairy spray.
You can add multiple stems to a separate armature, in the process building a fuller tree.
The larger trees here are Supertree material attached to sagebrush trunks with gel super glue, set quickly using spray accelerator. They have bulk that individual pieces of Supertrees lack. Other natural materials can be substituted for a similar effect.
Here’s a closer view at a tree built using this process. Once the whole thing is painted, and leaves added, the individual parts become indistinct and the whole thing looks like one tree.
