Hello friends, for my latest diorama, I needed three palm trees.
The trunks are made of balsa and shiprope. Paint does the rest.
The leaves are paper ones.

Not completely finished :

Stages for the leaves :

A couple of leaves (not yet glued into the trunks) :

The palm trees, not completed yet :


Update follows. Greetz Guy.

Great technique. Simple and effective. Thanks for sharing.

Hi Guy,

Interesting technique. I'm not convinced using string to replicate the rings. Usually the rings around the trunks (on coconut palms anyway) are an un-even pattern. We will have to wait and see how they come out after painting.

Here is a useful site: http://palmguide.org/palm_common.php

Here is your common coconut palm. Notice the rough and uneven trunk texture.

A close up of fronds (from another palm). When you come to doing the dead fronds, you could make them skinny and shrivelled like these:

I don't profess to be an expert on the subject, I am still trying to perfect my own technique to make realistic palms (without PE). I know it can be done!


Good luck,
Chas

Hey Chas,thank you for your reply. Your palm trees look fantastic !
The rope is regular indeed, and there are certainly other ways to make an appropriate trunk.

However, this is a trunk of a palm tree too, and it seems to have moreless the same structure as the rope trunk.


There must be many types of palm trees ???

I will not start all over again, but I'll do all the best I can to finish the trunks the best I can.

Thank you for the nice pics, and again, your palm trees are the best I've ever seen ! G.

hi guy

nice, easy and effective way!!
looks really good allready

good luck with the trunk!!

@ chas

the color of the leaves of your palmtree is really great!
well done

Hi again Guy,

Certainly there are hundreds of palm species, I just thought (judging by the leaves) that you were making a coconut palm. Anyway, as I said I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. What else is going to be in your diorama by the way?

Koen, thanks but I personally think the colour is too 'fluro' green. Next time I will try to paint some darker shades.

Chas

Hey Chas, I'm making a diorama with an M3A1 Stuart with one figure, in the background I'll use these two palm trees. It's a Tunesia (North Africa) diorama. I'm not a palm tree specialist and there are no palm trees at all where I live, so this makes it difficult.
Now I can only hope that my trees will be suitable (acceptable) for my diorama.
Luckily most modellers aren't flora specialists so I give it a shot.

Thank you for your help and advice mate ! These aren't my last palm trees, I'm quite motivated now to do better next time ! G.

hey Guy, you're a true breaker when it comes to diorama making aren't you? I have been seeing your trees since you post them but had to agree with Chas about the final effect BUT I also thought you were damn right about the idea though..
So, by thinking about it again this morning, I think you could really better them by adding some grain on the trunk with some Tamiya mastic, you know just to hit slightly the trunk with a loaded old brush so that it could break up the structure of the shiprope and add some grain..

Thank you JB, I'll plan another attack on the trunks my friend. G.

verry nice and verry creative when i see this i want to go back in vacation

Robbie, thank you, a great compliment, I appreciate this.

I've slightly reworked the first of two trunks, to hide moreless the structure of the rope. It was to similar. A bit of dabbing (acrylic paint) resulted in a better trunk.

Then the leaves were reworked with paint. Variation in green tones, brown and yellow tones was added to create more lifelike leaves.
Once glued in holes in the trunk, the leaves became more realistic. I had my doubts to be honest. Now I'm quite satisfied with the result.
The tree was completed by adding grass and other materials.

Detail shots :




Total view :


I hope you like it so far ? Greetz G.

looks awesome

Hi Guy,

This looks very good. The trunk came out better than expected although I'm still not keen on the texture. You have done well replicating the dead growth in the centre and the fronds look good too, although a bit more colour variation/progression would look nice.

Can't wait to see the final scene!

Chas

Tx Patrick !

Chas, I think the same as you about the trunk, altough I've tried to improve the rope look of it. But like you said, It's a bit better now, so I move on finishing this diorama. I'm finishing the second palm tree at this moment and I'll show photos later. G.

Hi guys, not done yet, but here's a pic :


G.

Well Now the trunk look like rope
Can you add some plaster or Polyfilla ? you can find it at HEMA
Cheers
Seb

Thank you Seb.
I'll continue finishing my diorama now, the palm trees are almost done.
I don't want to ruin them completely by reworking them time after time.
Next time I'll do things better. But of course I hope I didn't mess up completely ! Thanks for your help. Cheers, Guy.

Guy

Excellent article, It has set me on the right path. Now I just have to get my "A" into "G". LOL