Trees and Bushes

I worked in the backyard most of the day today. Since there wasn't much wind late afternoon, I decided this is a good opportunity to try and make some bushes and low trees to practice for making actual trees.

I'm using Scenic Express' Super Trees as armature and basically follow Joe Fugate's scenery clinic for making deciduous trees.

A couple weeks ago, I pulled some Super Trees out of the box and sorted them into "big trees" and "the rest". After bathing the Super Trees in thinned matte medium (didn't seem to make much of a difference, and I'll likely skip this step the next time), I hung the big trees under the ceiling to dry, and left the bushes and small trees in aluminum tubs. Once they were dry I planted the small trees and bushes into styrofoam sheets. I should have planted them into styrofoam right away, getting them out of the tub unharmed was a bit ... tricky.

Today I took the styrofoam sheets outside and made trees.

Spray the trunks in a light brown, followed by a light smattering of flat black to create some shadows. Then spray glue on 2-3 armatures at a time, and sprinkle medium-green coarse foam on the "tree". Repeat until the tree looks good. I tried to create fairly dense foliage since these trees will be close to the wall at the rear of the layout. Finally, I sprayed the trees with light shots of ColorMaster Basil green spray paint to give the tree foliage a pleasing color and add variation in the green. I finished off the trees with extra-strong hairspray to lock the foam in place.

Using this method it is shockingly easy to produce nice looking trees.

Look for yourself.