Creating dense forests

[kasskaboose]

I started painting my tree trunk and branches.  They look good despite being a bit thick. Could I reduce their thickness with leaves?  How do I make dense forests (sponge? fan-shaped brush?)?  I don't want to spend extra time covering my backdrop w/ branches and trunks to give the impression of a lush, dense forest.

TIA!

Lee

[HHPATH56]

The enclosed picture shows a corn field and farmer plowing, with surrounding wooded area. I personally use half wooden skewers, that are sharpened and stained for trunks. I use layered circles of furnace filters, with ground up Woodland Scenic foliage clumps to create deciduous trees in which you see the trunks.  For a dense forest on a hillside, I use various colored clumps of the WS foliage, glued to the stained hilside. Finally, I spray the dense forest with spray adhesive. Add reindeer moss for dead trees. I have about 300 trees with stained skewer trunks that a pushed into holes in stained scrap ceiling tiles to make moveable wooded areas.  By not attaching them permanently to the layout, one can adjust placement, or change entire wooded areas with Fall colored trees, and green Summer trees. There are four random shaped wooded areas grouped for this picture.  Note the commercial SceniKing forest banner pasted to the backdrop. I glue the foot long sections of the sequential set to the backdrop with a giant glue stick. One can remove the SceniKing (7" high) strips by carefully peeling them off the backdrop if necessary. I matched the blue of the sky at the top of the pictures, with flat Laytex painted sky, on the backdrop, before attaching the pictures.  By using groups of 3-D model trees in the foreground, and painted trees in the background, it make a believeable scene with forced perspective.

  

[cowman]

Are you painting a backdrop or covering a hillside with trees?  Makes a difference in the answers you will get.

Have fun,

[wm3798]

Like this?

My foreground trees are built up from Red Sedum flowers. They transition to Puff Balls toward the back.

For more on both see my tree tutorial
Lee

 

[jecorbett]

You really only need to produce trunks for the for the first couple rows of trees. Beyond that, the trunks can't be seen and all you need to do is create the canopy. One popular method is to use balls of polyfiber, painted green, covered with adhesive and then rolled in various shades of ground foam. They can then be mounted on the hillside using something as simply as toothpicks for trunks. Others will use an elevated screen and attach the canopies to the screen. Only the tops can be seen with either method.

Polyfiber trees tend to take on a rounded look so you might want to stretch out the ball in places to create a more irregular look. I've been told that over time, gravity will cause the fibers to sag although I haven't seen that yet in the year since I did my first forest.

Woodland Scenics offers a forest canopy kit but it is fairly pricey considering it only covers about 2 square feet. If you have a large area to cover, you might want to get the kit to get you started and find cheaper substitute materials for the rest.

[topcopdoc]

WM3798 Nice tutorial on the trees but my anti-virus software went crazy with your site. It found imbedded viruses and Trojan files attached. My anti-virus software destoyed them on my computer but you should check your computer files carefully.

Doc

[Bone]

After I started putting foam in the blender, I came upon the idea to tear the same foam used for grinding into clumps sizable for trees. Similar to the puffball method except I decided to try making a dense forest with the same material.

[wm3798]

Thanks for the heads up.  I've been having some issues with it... I'll check it out.

{edit} I updated all my McAfee last night... scanned everything that's been outgoing, looks like whatever it was is cleared up.  Again, thanks for the note. 

Lee 

[leighant]

Mostly a flat row of tree cutouts 80 scale feet high with two or three trees in front of the row at a few places-- and a bunch at the ends.               

[loathar]

I think the OP is talking about painting trees on his back drop.

If you want something that looks better than using sponges like I mentioned on your other thread, get a Bob Ross video on tree painting and watch it. Or go to Youtube and search for "Painting Trees". There's a bunch of instructional videos on there that show different techniques. There's a bunch of Bob Ross videos on there too.
Youtube is an excellent source for "how to" videos.

[WickhamMan]

Thanks for the heads up.  I've been having some issues with it... I'll check it out.

{edit} I updated all my McAfee last night... scanned everything that's been outgoing, looks like whatever it was is cleared up.  Again, thanks for the note. 

Lee 

My anti-virus software went nuts as well with your site preventing two files from being downloaded. I don't think whatever you did fixed the problem.

 

[jpeters711]

Lee,

Thanks a load! I was checking out the first 12 or so MR DVDs and was frustrated about not finding more how-to's. I have made scenery often over the years, but your tree ideas ...the puff ball in particular is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks again! Jim

[mikelhh]

 Leighant - that's a great looking layout. Any more pics?

 Mike

[nbrodar]

For hillsides, I use puffballs:

For the backdrop: the distant hills have a sorta sawtooth profile.  For the nears I kinda jab at the backdrop with a stiff bristle brush:

 

Nick