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Comments
I have heard it all now....
Greg in Australia
Having had a look on You Tube (
and Google Earth street scene ( 49°17'08.25"N 124°40'14.82"W ) up and down the highway. [ Alberni Hwy, Vancouver island , Canada ]
Is this the "right" look for my/our trees that I/we should be looking for? Are the really tall trees Douglas Fir trees, much lighter in color for the smaller younger trees and undergrowth?
John.
I'm not an expert on tree species, but those are very much like what you'd find around a Western U.S. logging railroad.
The really tall ones could be Douglas Fir or possibly Lodgepole Pines. For modelling, there isn't much difference--at least not a noticable one. On my layout, I'm not that particular as long as they are believable versions of a "pine" tree. However, if I had to be pinned down, I guess I try to model Douglas Fir and Blue Spruce. The shapes can vary from tree to tree, but the color is the biggest difference. As far as construction, I use the same 3 techniques as most people: bottle brush, furnace filter, and the caspia type:
I think the last batch you posted look very nice. Sometimes it can come down to personal taste. For me, I like the branches to look fuller--not sparsely covered with greenery.
Here comes the brutal honesty that Karl mentioned on page 2: Look back at some of your earlier trees. To me, they look like candle sticks with some weeds stuck in the side. If you're making an HO tree and you're using a 1/2" dowel, that works out to about 4 feet wide in real life. That's too wide! However, when you make the trunks much thinner and the branches much fuller, they look a lot more real.
Try using about a 3/8" wide dowell that's 12" tall. Taper it to a 1/4" and then further down to an 1/8" or even needle sharp! The taper should take up the top two thirds of the tree. Those aren't absolute measurments, but in a nutshell that's how I make mine. Tree trunks; not candle sticks.
Like I said, your most recent efforts are very believable. Tell us which materials you are using. Keep experimenting with different colors of green flock. Try hitting a few with different shades of green spray paint for variety. Also, try different base colors on the foliage before the flocking (blacks, grays, even rust brown in ares to show dead spots).
Good luck!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudotsuga_menziesii or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_Douglas-fir
Now whether you want to model something that size is another matter altogether!
Bill those 3 pictures you have posted have to be the best looking trees ive ever seen.
What did you use for the branches in the last picture?
So I am a little bit confused as to which is the better tree.
All in a row, complete with gum trees and palms
In the picture above, the 4th tree from the left was the one I was speaking of. That's the one I think looks most realistic. What materials did you use?
Wes-
The bottom tree in my post is made using Caspia branches flocked with Woodland Scenics T-49 green blend.
Candle stick trunk, because I had one laying around. Straw broom material for branches drilled and glued into the trunk. With sisal for secondary branches and dusted with T-49. A mix between a bottle brush tree and a Caspia tree.