Yes, it's me :-)

I apologize for my absence on the board and obviously lack of responding to others work.
After the finishing of module 7 and the work I had to do at home on 1/1 scale I struggled a bit to start again with disciplined modelling and the build of the missing 8th part.
The first parts which I will show later was basic rock work, but what I started already last autumn, put down again for a few months and restarted 3 months ago, had the potential to win even over my proofed patience.

I always wanted to build a high Evergreen tree, as high as they are normally as adults, some 10 meter high, around 35 cm (or 1 foot) in 1/35 scale.
As I do mostly I wanted to depart from the usual methods to do it, no synthetic stuff and also no Aspargus fern. Although the use of moss is not new, the way I choose to approach the use of it for the sake of a better detailing is not seen a lot, never until now I think. After a few months work on it, I understand why.
What I used is this kind of moss


It's freshly collected and still wet. It will thin out a lot more after drying.
I did not use it with it's entire branches but cut instead all the individual side branches from the stem
and reassemble branches for my tree with all the small bits of moss glued on one by one



This is the same procedure, used on the lower branches with moss from my stock, collected a long time ago already and with all original colour lost.


I first put together the branches, then airbrush them and put them on the trunk. No colouring is needed any more when the whole tree is assembled. That way , I am not going to spoil the trunk again.

The tree having 30 cm and every step of the tree needs at least 5-6 branches, I estimate the whole tree having around 100 branches and probably around 5000 pieces of moss!

One of the problems I had was the presence, just meters away from my working space, from a tree in my garden. This made me permanently look for the best way to imitate the real thing


The branches are natural too, coming from a few different plants with suiting branches. The advantage versus wire is the natural thinning out of most of them. On top of the often to smooth branch I sprinkled a very fine sand and pigment mix to imitate the bark.


Neat the trunk I added of course dead wood as it is typically seen on these trees.

The tree is finished, with the exception of some touch ups with the branches and the replacement of missing or unsatisfying moss pieces, and of course the adding of a lot of cones!
I will cut some of the trunk when I decide on the final rest place of it, right hear near the new rock part or near the Villa Prüm to fill a big empty space. The headless figure is of course just to get the height relations.



The tree will be part of the display at the SMC expo in Veldhoven , but I will probably not leave it on the dio for it's final rest place in the museum in the real castle of Clervaux. There is already enough to see on the dio.
After Veldhoven I will try to make the Evergreen the centre point of another diorama. The work invested warrants using it more then once.

I hope you like it and I hope to be back on the board more regularly from now on.

Greets to all

Claude

PS I have still a lot of books to sell and by the way, there will be a review in MMiR 61, getting distributed right now

Claude,
Awesome job, definitely unique, I have to know how long that tree took you to build?
- John

Wow
That Tree looks Amazing. Well worth the effort.

Shaun

Hi Claude,

Welcome back, as always super work, I'll look forward to part 8.

Cheers

Al

Oh freck!!

A piece of art...and bloody hard work!!! Typical Claude!

Glad to have you back my friend!!!

Cheers

Romain

Hello Claude ,

excellent lay out and the tree is just fantastic.

actually this is the real thing !

Congratulations and i'm looking forward to see more of your work.

Kurt

John, Shaun, Alan, Romain, Kurt

Thank you very much guys, you don't know how relieved I am that you think the tree to be not so bad.

While you build such a thing and spend hours and hours with it, you only think it might be going in the right direction but basically just see problems, realising that you will never be able to replicate the real thing because there are either not enough branches or the foliage is not fine enough.
Unvisible to the eyes on these pictures are the hundreds of tiny hair sized twigs I glued on the branches near the trunk to simulate dead wood.

Overall, I spend easily 300 hours on the tree and I am really glad that I am done. The cones are not so hard to do, so I can slowly start thinking ahead to the next item of the module part.

Thanks a lot

Claude

Comte Claude,
First of all,nice to see you back again.
If you want my opinion on the fir tree well......... It's freekin brilliant!!
If you took the right picture with the right light and background it would be very very hard to see the difference between your tree and reality.
I didn't think you could ever top your willow tree but here you go!!! Awesome work buddy,
J

Claude, welcome back ! Glad you took a little break and did some 1 to 1 work to clear the mind. That pine tree has me shaking my head in awe ! Looking forward to the 8th segment.
Again Claude, Welcome Back !

Thanks a lot Jerry, I'm glad to hear that, really
I tried a bit to photoshop it in a picture, but I have no real time for that now.

Hi Tom, I'm really happy to see you still watching for my updates.

The tree is nearly finished now


A view from slightly below



I added 200-300 cones to it. Cones were made with Super Sculpey (tan coloured) and backed at around 170 °C until reddish.
I still need to replace some of the branches points, because they broke already or are completely unsatisfying, I will also replace some of the fern.
On the lower branches I started with another moss, less fine, and now I do not like it any more at all. So I will take some down and replace with finer moss.

The work on the lower trunk will be done later when I decided on the resting place.

Thanks a lot for looking , I really appreciate

Claude

Hi Cladue,

Outstanding tree, you have the patience of a Saint.

Looks spot on to me.

Al

I must say that is the best spruce I have ever seen.
Thanks for showing us.

Cheers

Looks absolutely fantastic!

Claude as always amongst the most stunning things I have ever seen. Your latest pics are a struggle to tell if it is real!

Paul

I do notice the difference in the ferns. Very subtle but noticeable. The pine cones are tremendous.
As I said before that is one realistic awesome piece of work.
J

Thanks a lot guys!

Good to see all those long time followers.

Greets

Claude

Modul 8 is finished, just in time for my last expo on SMC in Veldhoven (NL)

If you remember, I was forced into this last and 8th module because at the very last moment I had to widen the Villa Prüm module by 20 cm to better fit the Villa on it and of course I want my whole dio to be somewhat square.

The module 8 thus is 140x20 cm big.

In real Clervaux, just behind the bridge, you can turn left to access a rural road, a spot called "Hoh" and who was bordered with small houses, already old at the time this picture from around the year 1920 was taken.

Unfortunately (or fortunately if you consider that I did not really wanted to make one more house), I had not the space for a house. I limited myself therefore in a highly improvised improvisation of this area, integrating some gardens on the opposite street side ( I saw those on another picture, bordering part of it with a railing and putting an old abandoned stable near the street, reflecting by this the relatively poor neigborhoud. The rest is filled up with more vegetation in order to reflect the rising hilltop and forest opposite the village.

The main new element is of course the fir. I finally chose to place it in front of Villa Prüm where it nicely fills an otherwise empty space.

I placed the three last moduls in my working cellar in order to adapt everything. Having this 2.20 x 0.85 cm part together made it difficult to make good pictures of the new part, so I tried my best at this point to cover for you what I did the last months.

Let's start with this picture taken crammed against the wall and with the background hastily eliminated in order to concentrate somewhat on the dio.


On the left side, a hill formation looking somewhat like a very touristic part in Luxembourg, the "Müllertal, (other pictures will follow once I have more space again),a small path leading from it to the rural road. In the background you recognize the Villa Prüm with the fir planted now in front of it.

Here you recognize the coninuation of the small stream plunging into the Clervaux river and an old tree stumb to fill another empty space.

Following the path to the street you will first meet a half dozen little firs (photo later also) and stumble upon the stable. My imagination (or was it my motivation) did not yield a better result.
.
The gardens, limited by slate stone, are beneath the stable.

Nice view of the fir and the bridge


and overall view from the other side of Villa Prüm.


As I do not assemble the whole dio anymore at home, I need to wait for the expo in 4 weeks to get the new overall and defintely finished view.

Overall size now is 300 x 220 cm!

I just need to clean the whole thing now and slowly let it dawn on me that I am really finished this time.

Hope ou like the rest

Claude

Hi Claude,

More spectacular work, the whole project is simply stunning. I remember when you embarked on Part 1 which was a mighty undertaking in its self. One day I hope to see the whole diorama in real time, truly inspirational stuff.

Congratulations on reaching the end, but what next? -

All the very best.

Al

Congrats on the final completion. I think right here you can insert every complimentary word and phrase that there is because I would get tired fingers trying to type them all.
Safe to say,I have learned more from this epic dio than you can ever believe and I am in your debt for posting your work here so I can get new ideas,etc.
Brilliant!
J

Absolutely stunning Claude!!! As always your work exceeds the bounds of normalicy. Extremely cool to the power of N!!!

Congrats on the finale. Would love to fly the pond someday to feast on this as a whole in person. Great job again.

Dave

Counting among the privileged ones to have seen the dio in the flesh, I can only say that it was a real experience!

I sincerely hope everything goes well with the museum and that this piece of art will finally get the place it actually deserves!

Thank you Claude for taking us along!!

Cheers

Romain

Thanks a lot guys!

As I said often myself, the support from you guys played a big role for my motivation during those last 9 years. Yes, I checked back my first post regarding this topic was in August 2005!

So let's not cry to much about past things and look forward to a next project. Hopefully I can get my self motivated to start something very soon.

I think I will conclude this Clervaux thing by posting a very last picture of the whole diorama, taken either myself during the Expo or I will fetch one from the Net.

Until then, thanks a lot for going along with me during all that time

Claude

Ok, it's me again

I owq you some close ups from this last Module.
I just cleaned up the whole 2.2 m river by brushing a coat of resin over it and am now checking to make the side panels for the display.
While doing so I had the Module well positionned to make the photos. Hope you like them.

As a reminder, what you see here is about 100x 20 cm big



the stump of a tree, just cut out from Balsawood. As always, I am not doing a great deal with micro painting, the overall look is what I am aiming for.
In the background ivy, made from stinging nettle seeds, is hanging from the rock



7 small firs with a maximum height of 9 cm to fill this space, done with different kind of mosses



A view into the rock formation. A path runs through it. Hopefully Romain will be reminded of the Mullerthal in Luxembourg.

The gardens, well, my imagination went not to far. It is winter and wartime, so don't except some left over vegetables here. It also occurred to me that I forgot to add at least a bit of vegetation to the little brownish hill n the background. I will do that tomorrow.


That's it

Have a nice weekend

Claude

I don't comment on these threads enough. When I think of the whole aspect of it all, I get a headache! Incredible stuff, glad I could see it progress over the past few years, and am looking forward to the finale.

-Conor

This is just amazing, can't wait to see your work in Veldhoven!