Yo Friends,

A little project between "bigger" works on the bench.

A small road vignette with a couple of pollard willows in the picture.

The willows are a new product of the Belgian producer, Joefix Studios in 1/35 scale.

A nice set very well and sharp sculpted, with lots of details like the real pollard willows.
Also a piece of road and some vegetation will fill up the base...

But first some pics of the work so far.

The set, tree willows and the branches with the leaves on it in a nice color.





For a better handling true the paintproces a fixed some screws in it.



Groundcolor, base and wash...







Dry fit test on the base.



Started the drybrush and detail painting.



More to come!

Stay tuned.

Greetz Nico

Your work is always so entertaining to look at -and then I could learn a trick or 2 from you about good picture taking!
nice trees so far, I stay posted

Hi Nico! I really like this base, off to a great start!

One thing, the base is too small to fit the rest of your un built plane.

Keep it up!

Martyn

Nice job so far. This can easily turn into a SBS feature.

Fantastic looking product!!! Can't wait to see the finished pieces. Will be looking for a set of these myself now......my poor wallet!!!!

These sure do look great!
Just what I am looking for for my Dutch M3A1-dio.
Can't wait to see how they turn out once completed!

Question, is this Pollard willow a type of tree that is normally found in Europe? Don't recall our willows here in the U.S. looking like those, but I'm no tree expert either. What ever they are, they look real nice.

Dioman - these are primarily European. I haven't seen them in the US either. I have seen a number of image with them in Europe.

Thanks Scott. Just really didn't look like the willow by the house and wanted to make sure. I seem to recall a pic of U.S. armor going down a dirt road in Europe with them lining the road. Dam, another dio idea.

I know what you mean..... I read the name and saw my 1st pic and it didn't "Fit" my idea of a willow. That led me to research it and that's when I found the Europe photos.

"Pollard" isn't a breed of willow, it's a forestry management technique. Basically you let the tree grow a few years, then you lop all the branches off at about head height and put them to whatever use you can. The tree's reaction is to put out loads of fresh shoots, and about year later, you harvest them for use as withies. That's the thin whippy branches that people use for making baskets, hurdles, and (nowadays) over-priced garden ornaments. Or you can wait longer and harvest thicker branches for other uses. Willow is so vigorous that the tree will happily carry on doing this for years. Other trees can be pollarded but these ones is definitely willows. (A similar technique, but done at ground level, is coppicing, and it's done mainly with hazels.)

Pollarding is much less used these days because demand for withies has plummeted. So you often see old pollards that have been let go - clear trunks up to five or six feet, then a mass of normal growth above that, making them look like lollipops. They're usually along watercourses, as that's where willows are happiest, but the tree of choice is the crack willow, not the weeping willow (which isn't native to Europe, if memory serves). Crack willow is also, of course, the tree of choice for cricket bats.

Now, these rather lovely model pollards are completely devoid of new growth. That implies that they've only just been pollarded. The normal time for this is late winter or early spring, so you'll want to ensure two things: 1, that the rest of the diorama matches that time of year; and 2, that you include the scars where the twigs were removed. I can't quite make out whether the moulding includes them, but you generally find that they're about the thickness of a finger, they grow in a ring around the scar at the edge of the pollard section, and they show up much lighter than the older bark. Alternatively, you could add short growth (up to about six feet over the course of a year) and add as much leaf growth as is appropriate to the time of year you've chosen.

Sean - cool - thanks, great stuff.

Yo Friends,

Thanks fort the fast reply's

@-Jba,




Glad you learned something from me

@-Martyn,




Good notice the rest off the plane is still on the bench...I have some ideas...thats for later

@-Scott,

Yes a SBS it sure will be..more updates are coming.

@-Jonathon, Yes indeed...its a cool product...I am also interesting to the end result.

@-Ron, Thanks mate...I'am sure you now this trees also back in the Netherlands.

@-Bob,




Yes indeed, More on the West side of Europe.

@Sean, Wow...what an explation...I've learned a lot from you The setting on my dio will be late spring...so muth branches with the leaves will be added to the trunk.

Some pics of the real thing!







Or just google "Pollard willows" on the pic button

Stay tuned!

Greetz Nico

Hi
Nice looking items.
Watching this with interest to see the finished item.

I really like this kind of small settings. Nice job on painting the trunks, Nico!

Primož

Rare pic, with willow: Innundation of the Gelre Valley, w. German troops, May 1940


Great images:

http://images.google.nl/images?imgc=gray&hl=nl&safe=off&client=opera&rls=nl&tbo=1&um=1&sa=1&q=knotwilg&btnG=Zoeken&aq=f&oq=&start=0&imgtbs=c#start=0&tbo=1

Great looking trees Nico. Please keep posting progress as this seems to be a very interesting project in the making.
@ Sean- thankyou for that education on trees and Pollarding. It's stuff like that, that makes a great day on the forums! When I first saw the trees, they look exactly like the fruitless Mulberry trees in front of the DeYoung Museum and Academy of Science in S.F..
Been a while since I've been there and hope they are still there for people to enjoy
Cheers for Ents!
Rick

Yo Friends,

Thanks for the reply's

@-Jan, Thanks for the nice pic!

@-Rick, Thanks for you're reply to, no problem...I will post it SBS..stay tuned!




you're absolute right about that...thanks Sean

Greetz NIco

Search overload, , Thanks guys. I now feel like the local pollard expert. Will try making my own along a river like the pics. Neat looking trees and totaly not what we are used to seeing here in the U.S. though I'm sure some where around here they were probably used for wicker. Good write up Sean, learned alot.

Yo Friends,

Did some more work on the Willows...fun to do the placing of all the branches

Some pics to show my work.

First some several drybrushes to pic out more the details...more on the natural colored wood.



Followd by a little wash in to the "hole" of the trunk self.



The drilling hole part...



The fun part! Fixing of the branches with some woodglue...that will cost me a lot of modelling fun!







All comment welkom!

More to come!

Greetz Nico

Hello Nico,

Great! Now that's what I call "real" folliage. Excellent, seems taht Joefix produces good material, I have to buy their bamboo for months now...
I stay posted.
Bye.
Alex.

Great, don't forget the little twigs with dead leaves near the ones you put for extra realism.

Hey Nico,

Great leaves indeed. And although they're not exactly willow leaves, –or not at all– it could pass for Elder Tree. (Els in Dutch) . And Elders are pollarded too, so there's a problem fixed!

Another thing: what about algae and moss? Will you be weathering with green when the tree is in your dio? It still looks a bit 'plasticky' as it is now...
(Moss and algae ore always more present on the western side of the tree: the bit that gets most sunlight...)

I'll be following the build with interest...

Yo friends,

Thanks for posting

@-Alexandre, Yep indeed...real foliage, treathed to last a long modelling live

@-Jba, dead twigs near the green ones?

@-Johan,




I was thinking of making moss from putty, very tiny offcourse...I'll have to test this first.




Indeed the West side...the side thats gets LESS sunlight...otherwise their will be no moss on that side.

Thanks for the reply's!

Greetz Nico

Do you mean alder, rather than elder? Alder leaves are round, whereas elder leaves are pinnate (small, and they come in groups up both sides of the twig). Also, it's near-impossible to pollard elder - the tree is too small and too short-lived.

If these are willows, the rounder leaves mean they could be goat willows rather than crack willows. Not all have long, thin leaves.

Moss: tends to grow on the lee side of tree trunks, where there's least wind and most moisture. In NW Europe the prevailing wind is south-westerly so moss gathers on the north to north-east side. This will, of course, be moderated by local conditions. The west side, though, doesn't get the least light - it's the side that's lit in the afternoon and evening!