hello, i set out thismorning with a purpous , to collect tree items,
i came back with 2 twigs.......
here is one of them , i am practising making trees,

My sincere opinion is that this one is not convincingly imitating a tree.

Cheers
Claude

go on then...

It Was actually you Claude wo pretty much made me get off my ass and go and look for some nature stuff to make some trees,
and you werent even constructive about it.

Armorama welcomes with open arms beginners, just dont expect advise.
its the same with my gargantuan projecu i hvae lined up, only 2 people have spoken, one offering help, the oter a well wisher, good for them , but it was a clear ask for help, and nobdy othr than Frank or Newfish are giving a flying monkey,
Thankyou Claude the tree is now in the bin.,

you know, this may sounds crazy but if "you drip that branch in some plaster or celluclay you may get the effect you are looking for" my reason for saying this is , ok you already have the limbs, you just need to make it look more realistic, instead of just a " branch" scupt it a bit .. play with it....

I would have to agree w/ William. Play with it, find some little roots too add more little branches, dip it in plaster, and scuplt abit. Do what you want with it.

Here is a pic of what I mean w/ using little roots-


thxs,
John

Jimmy

This is not the first time you've posted for comments, advise etc. and when it's not been to your liking you've started to get annoyed. Is it no wonder then that people are reluctant to comment. You don't get help and advise by taking an aggressive stance mate.

Maybe the reason others didn't offer help or advice is because they

1. Could have missed the thread.
2. Not enough information to go on.
3. Those that read it didn't have any relevant information to give.

It's not compulsory to give advice here and you certainly won't get people willing to give it if you continue to take this sort of attitude.

Alan

Also here is a branch w/ no add ons from a big fern tree. So sometimes you can get lucky and get that perfect "tree" and some time you have to do a little fixing up.

Now this "tree is probably a little oversized bbut that is easy to fix-

Here is the little 1/35 guy next to it -


hope this helps,
John

thanks for evryones help so far,
i dont quite get the plaster bit, can anyone elaborate,?
so small roots, to make extra branches got that bit,
what about leaves?

and i swear you get trees similar to what i did in warm climeates.

sorry for the moan, i know i ahve been doing it a lot lately Alan but there is much on my plate, and i love modelling but when someone says that your tree doestne really look like a tree when you know that hence "tree experimental" and state you are practising. you get a bit peeved.
just speking for the minority of people who dont get responces to word, be it because they are beginners, or because nobody knows or cares fopr the subject at hand.

Your first post is up just five hours and you're moaning because you haven't got the reponse you want. Traffic is slow on Armorama on Sundays - a lot of us have kids that drag us away from the PC. I spent the ady palying games with my 6 year old daughter and her friends at her birthday party.

Anyway I've had posts go unanswered for days no point in moaning about it. And because you have a lot on your plate doesn't give you the excuse to moan here. We ALL have a lot on our plate and we come to Armorama to get away from moaning.

Now TREES; It is very hard to find a twig that looks like a tree. Roots are good, clean them and let them dry. Try to find some Sunflowers they should all be dying off at this time they look quite good.

There are some good threads on making trees from twisted wire which you then coat with plaster. Sorry I don't have them bookmarked.

For leaves spray the branches with spray mount it's an artist spray adhesive and dip the branches in dried herbs. Most people go for oregano. At this time of year you can also collect birch tree seeds which make good scale leaves. You can also mix pieces of roots and pieces of twig by drilling holes and joining the pieces with wire pins. A good cheap primer for general diorama work including trees is Osprey's World War II Dioramas which you can get used on Amazon for less than a Fiver.

Jimmy , Jimmy, please stop now.

What did you expect here? There is a lot more out there who can be used as a tree and is way more convincing than this piece.
There are no hundred ways i could have explained it. I simply see no way of doing something out of your twig. Perhaps it could partly be used in some exotic setting.

Sorry Jimmy if that is not what you expected , but it is how is see it.

I am very happy to motivate modelling friends in some way but here you bring some vegetation out of the woods and declare it a tree. I think you made it yourself a bit to easy here.

Take the little "horns" going out of this branches and do a scale calculation. I am sure you will get around 2-3 cm thickness!

I was myself for two hours in the woods today looking for branches usable as base for a tree, at least two three twigs well grown together, nada, i found nothing suitable.
I just want to say that even that exercice requires some patience and often it also requires a second look.

So Jimmy, please don't take my comment bad ( it was perhaps a bit short), and simply try it again. If it would be so easy to find something in nature everybody would have convincing nature in their dios, but they don't have.

Regarding your last post. You need to find wind fallen(sp?) trees with the roots outside (i noticed that birch tree roots are superb) and collect the small roots. Those you drill and glue in some suitable base twig , a bi- or trifurcated twig.
Look at my birch tree in my thread, it was made like this.
That's IMO the only way of doing trees outside of the wire twisting method.

For the leaves , its even more complicated. You can use fallen leaves, dryed and shredded, but i personnaly only use them as .... fallen leaves on the ground.

So i am more than willing to help but give me something to work with. By the way, you did not show us your second collect twig.

Cheers and peace

Claude

PS while i wrote my post , Pat answered you also and got some solutions for the leaves i forgot

Thanks Pat and Claude
Apologies for Claude.

oregano, ok, or Birch seeds ok, i will try and identify some fo these, then the hard part of finding, we may have oregano int he cupboard, (i hope)

Claude witht he thickness argument, me would be working at about 1/10th the thickness of paper, so with thickness, i see your point but that is the difficult aspect.

ok again the birch, but roots thsi time, my local woods will have a tree hungry visitor soon.

teh second twig is practically the same, but bigger, and im looking for small
sorry again, i guess i need to learn patience:(

Love the SKP figure dude, not bad attempt either on the tree.
Stuart

Mr Skp aint finished, yet, long way to go on that one!
i have realised now , mr tree could be a lot better, and am feeling rather silly fot ir

Hi Jimmy,
Firstly mate, don't get too disheartened if you get little or no response to a post, unfortunately that's just the way things are sometimes on forums!

As Alan has mentioned, having such an attitude won't win you any favours especially if you spit the dummy each time

I think Claude's comment was by no means meant to be derogatory, it was his honest opinion and i agree with what he posted.

Anyways, back to the subject at hand...
Maybe you should try and look for roots as John suggested?I found some good examples after weeding the garden one day.
I find branches from trees are too large to use in 1/35 scale, roots are perfect..
These particular ones are good for small shrubs, and if you spray some glue on the roots and add some sea-foam they can look quite convincing.
This is my own humble opinion though .
The only step left to do is to mist a coat of the desired colour you want over the trees.

Roots:


With sea-foam added:


Mist coated with some green, in one of my first diorama attempts:


The same method can be used for bigger trees, here is one i made in my first ever dio:




Sea foam can be bought at various shops such as florists or garden centres, alot cheaper than the LHS !

I use the method found
HERE by Keith Forsyth.Things such as dried herbs could be added as Keith does , but it's all a matter of personal taste!
Nice figure BTW
Cheers,
Shay

Hi

So what you are looking for is small branches that can look in scale like tree trunks and large branches of trees.

Try to look for fiberous roots. Some plants put out a lot of tiny roots as they start to grow. Some will be just too small to use but others will be good - as a basis to start from, that's what all this is usually about, taking the raw materials, the items you find and adapting, adding, removing and all the other modifying to create your mini work of art.

The roots will need drying out and then you have the start of your tree structure.

It pays to look at some shrubs rather than trees for small sections with interesting texture.

I recently removed a large climbing Clematis from our garden that had died. When I cut through the old dried branches of this dead plant they looked like miniature sections of a tree with it's growth rings so I saved a few lengths which I'll use to simulate the end of a log or cut off branch on any future diorama work.

For wire, you don't have to go to a shop. Check out the off cuts from electrical cable, plenty of copper wire in there to use. Ask Dad or your mates if they have odd bits, maybe even check out a skips if they have any building work going on near you. Get to the off cuts of plasterboard before the rain makes them soggy. Use them for scale walls. Strip the paper face and carve mortar lines for walls or cobblestone lines for roadways. Lick of watered down pva glue to seal the plaster.

It doesn't cost lots of money to model, indeed some would derive more pleasure from creating something from nothing, scraps, than just going out and buying the bits and putting it together.

You have enthusiasm by the bucket load, you just need to temper that with some patience and understanding.

I am very keen to see your progress your project for your elderly relative, I thought it a great idea and a very touching one. I was going to write in the thread and say so but after our little exchanges in your Tiger thread I thought why should I !! That's what happens when you give off a bad feeling to people when they want to help and advise.

We will help and pass on as much as we can but it's conditional not compulsive.

Happy modelling. Keep at it. Good luck. All the best.

Alan

Hi

One other resource often overlooked - your local library. Not only may they stock books on subjects of interest you can also check to see if a book is available to have ordered and brought down to your local branch for you to lend.

Of course the greatest source and most direct is this ... t'internet.

Here is the article on leaves from Birch trees
miniature leaves

Now's the time of year to start looking (UK) for these "catkins"

Alan

Shay thankyou for the advice about the sea foam, i will pop downt the florists tomorrow to ahve a peek!, and the herbs look fine, i definatly liked Parsley, Alan, so the little ones can be better? ok and some climbers make good cut/fallen trunks

for wire, i have loads of guitar wire that is broken, about 10 meters, but maybe too thin but i can bunch it . plasterboard sounds good, i will keep my eye peeled.
ah, Apologies for the tiger thread, i get carried away with my ideas,
and i agree that i need to sort out my balance of enthusiasm and rgarding others and the offerings. if you accept the apologies ii have offered the lonely cobweb filled thread of my relative is still open

i have been down the library many times lately, and most books on modeelling unfortunatly are on aircraft or boats, but they did have some cracking vehicular books, but they have gone walkies:(


all resources are pooped in favourites:)

whoops, ill leave that typo in for laughs
all tehe best
James

Just seen this - but don't buy it all as I need some! like seafoam

that the real stuff?
i always thought it looked a lil diff 2 that

Well, it looks a bit like "sea foam" but has smaller ends - and it's tons cheaper too.
Real seafoam is like this: Forest in a box
and as you see - costs more (because it's from a model store, not a florists)
As you need variety, I'd suggest both would sit well together...

Jimmy, dried roots are definitely the way to go. I'll try to shoot a picture tomorrow to show you what I have collected.

Shay, incidentally, your diorama there is one of the first I saw when I first joined Armorama!

Chas

Sorry for not getting back sooner, here is the picture I promised:

These roots were salvaged from a dying shrub in my backyard. When I was in the UK I saw some perfect material in the hedgerows so you have no excuse for not finding anything Jimmy!

Chas

Jimmy--your figure in the first photo is very nicely done. Good job
DJ

Jim, as a dio builder myself, I find that small roots do the job great. A few times a year after it rains I go out rooting. The rain softens the ground so as you pull gently on the roots you don't loose all the small sections. Dry them and then toss in a microwave to de-bug and your ready. If you check out the 2008 A.M.P.S. show you'll see my airbourne vingette with the hedgrows. These are the types of roots you'll want. Each leaf was glues and painted as I like the way it looked over the other ways of doing it. It is a long time in doing it that way but you might like the results. Longer roots= taller trees and you can always add branchs if you need it filled out more. bob

Hi Jimmy. Let me recommend a book to you: Advanced Terrain Modelling by Richard Windrow published by Osprey Masterclass. He makes some fantastic trees from twisting strands of wire together and plaster coating them followed by texturing. He made a big hollow, rotted log split down the middle from a hair curler using the same technique. The results are absolutely amazing. The book covers several very different types of dioramas but all have useful ideas and techniques that can be applied to anything you may be building. The text is clear and easy to follow; the photos are all in color and very well rendered. Even if you don't read English very well, the pictures still show what to do and how. Chapters include: 1) Materials, tools, and tips 2) A First World War trench 3) A motte and bailey castle 4) Fall in the forest (This is most stunningly realistic and beautifully rendered forest diorama I have ever seen on any subject!) 5) Techniques 6) A walled garden 7) A Second World War street and 8. Sources (manufacturers and distributors of the products he uses)

I found my copy at Amazon Stores and believe I paid about $30.00 for it. It is worth every penny! I am not sure if it is still being published, I think Osprey has a web site, but new or used it is worth the effort to find it and certainly worth the price.