Ola everyone!

Last night, around 1am I felt a sudden urge to try my luck again with the whole tree bark imitation idea that I had stuck in my head for some time now. Some of you might remember my last try with this, a small greenish trunk which was just a test piece. I promised to post some more pictures of a whole tree, but I had other stuff to do (mostly finishing my tower) and so the tree was added to my "to do" list. I even bought a lot of materials which can be handy in a tree project, like a lot of wire, some epoxy putty, different kinds of clay and other stuff. Too bad my enthusiasm and motivation left me, and so the whole project was set a side.
Fortunatelly something hit me yesterday and here I am again, with a tree bark test piece. It's a bit different than the last time and a bit more scale correct, see for yourself:

- a few overall shots, from different angles:







- two closeups of the small branch:





and the whole piece with a ruler to show scale:



I used the same material as last time, plasticine, a non hardening modeling clay. Added all the cracks with a knife and a small dentist tool (like a needle). Texture was further enhanced with a toothbrush and a piece of some synthetic wool. The branch was created from a toothpic broken in half and inserted into the plasticine, then cover with some more plasticine and textured.

So what do you think??:) If you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them:)

Cheers,
dsc.

Very convincing. As I scrolled down I kept saying - "How big is it?" Then the ruler shot -nice.
Overall very nice - if you want to improve it you can work on the transition ring where the small limb pokes out of the trunk. It is very uniform in your rendition. I usually see a bit of a 'seam' if you will a transition area on branches. Check out some 1:1 versions for what I'm talkin about. This is a very minor nit pick so take it for what its worth.

Very nice texture on the bark.

Hi Tom:

First off, you live in Poland right? Where did you learn such flawless
English. Whoa, very impressive. I've been trying to speak English all my
life livin' here in the American Heartland. . . and it's got me completely
baffled, eh?

I remember Pasticine from my college days in sculpture class. . . I flunked
the course, but that's a nudder story, as dwe sez, eh? What you're doing
is first rate, Tom. One of the reasons I responded to this thread is that
I have also had the idea of building a trunk of a tree from scratch. Your
efforts are so much better than what I've come up with. I have some
concern about the ever soft Plasticine. Yes, I haven't used it in 40 years,
so I'm am wondering can you paint it and deal with it as you would with
other putties that eventually harden? Your answer may open a window for
me as to how to approach scratchbuilding a tree in the future. I hope you
will post other WIP photos real soon. Most interesting. Wishing you well,

Amazing Tom. The texture looks as close to the real thing, as one could wish for. Did I hear somebody cry sbs?
Thanks for sharing Tom.

Looks very convincing, Tom. I like it. BTW, plasticene's great, isn't it? I've just discovered a brand that when left open for about 24-48 hours drys to a hard brittle finish, like sun-baked mud or clay. Superb for groundwork, because you can then carve it and have a dry sandy finish.

Here's another idea. If you want dry, peeling bark, try cork. Take something that's fairly soft, like a wine bottle cork and carv it to the tree stump shape (or whatever) you require. Then, using the tip of an exacto blade, dig in carefully, and tear loose a thin section of the cork surface. Once you can get hold of it with a tweezer, peel it back, but not fully loose from the main body. Then drop in a bit of white glue at the centre of the torn patch and paste it back, leaving the edges unglued and loose. Repeat all over the trunk.

If you look here at this half-done dio, you can see where I've used the same technique to depict a weathered fence.

With a bit of modification, this technique can be used to depict bark, weathered planks, or even scorched wood.

Tom, don't take this the wrong way, but to me it looks more like tree inside meat after the bark has been weatherd off and sun dried to a petrification like look, like driftwood.
As I see it that way, it is very well made but to me not as outside bark.
Maybe also because I live on the Atlantic coast and see alot of driftwood and all the trees around here are rough barked Oaks, Maples, etc, the only smooth bark type tree around here is White Birch and Sycamore.
Anyway it's a very good piece of detailed work.
Cheyenne

Sorry forgot a pic. That's swmbo my little commandant's color choice, actually it is more of a red , flash b.s.
Oh yeah she also bit%hed about the dust too.

VERY convincing!!! well done!

Ola everyone:)

Thanks again for all your comments, it really helps to create stuff when you post suggestions/ideas/criticism because sometimes the creator misses the most obvious things.

Scott: it's all about the details, so the area around the branch is important:) I agree that it looks a bit too similar when compared to the rest of the tree, I need to break that smooth transition with some horizontal or oval lines. Will work on that.

Al: glad you like it:)

Rick: yeah I'm from Poland and learned my english in private english schools or by watching cartoonnetwork:) for the last few years I've been spending a lot of time on different forums, which certainly helps to practise my english a lot. Still some of the stuff you guys (US or UK) write (some of your words also in various topics all over the forum) gets my like: huh?? so I guess I still have a lot of things to learn:)

The whole technique behind this texture is really simple. All you need is some modeling clay (something better than plasticine, cause it sucks because of the fact that it doesn't get hard ever!! so anything you make can be quite easily flatened or damaged), patience and some basic tools. If you want I can make a small SBS for everyone to enjoy:)
Because you live in the US I would recommend trying Super Sculpey (bake in an oven to make it hard) or FIMO or DAS, which are both air hardening modeling clays (at least I think they are:) ). All of these are 90% like plasticine, so they are soft and easy to handle but after some time (or under higher temperature) they get hard, which is crucial when it comes to details.

Jesper: thanks mate!! and who knows, there might even be an SBS:)

David: I think the stuff you are reffering to is either FIMO or DAS, both air drying clays, they are soft like plasticine, look like it, with the slight difference that they get hard with time:) They are great to work with also:)
Great tip with the peeling bark, I will have to give it a shot:) Thanks mate!!

Cheyenne: damn it you got me!! that was the thing that jumped into my mind a few minutes after looking at the finished piece. It looks a bit flatened because I used a sponge on the surface to eliminate some of the rough edges left from brushing the plasticine. But looking at it from a scale point of view I think it's not so bad. The cracks are a bit shallow but you have to remember this is 1:60 scale, so doing deeper marks would be out of scale in my opinion. I might experiment with adding some more texture to make the surface look less polished and "pretty":)

Jon: thanks for your feedback mate!!

So do you agree with Cheyenne that it looks less like bark and more like barkless dried up tree?? And I'm not asking to show that most people think it looks good and only Cheyenne thinks differently so he is wrong:) I just want to make it look more realistic. I will still try to work on this technique to make it better, so any ideas or suggestion on how to improve it might be very helpful:)

Cheers,
dsc.