Hi all,
This is a pic of my first attempt at making puff ball trees for my layout...........personally I do not care for the was they look so far...........I am trying to get the look of Fall......since my time frame is October 1974.
Opinions and suggestions please.
Dennis Blank Jr.
CEO,COO,CFO,CMO,Bossman,Slavedriver,Engineer,Trackforeman,Grunt. Birdsboro & Reading Railroad
Not quite sure,, but by the looks the puffs may be too big and have lost their rounded top shape. I try for a finished size of about 1" - 1 1/2" for my distant mountain trees in HO. Larger ones might be needed for closer hills.
Your hill is quite steep, not sure if that is effecting the looks or not.
I pretty much use one color for a batch, but make and mix several batches when putting them on the layout. It looks like you mixed quite different colors on some of the balls. I am doing slightly earlier in the fall, so mine are more shades of green. I may mix two close colors together in the mixing bag, but not the color variation I seem to see in yours. You can sprinkle a little lighter shade on the tops to indicate sunlight, but I'm not sure that would be as effective with the bright fall colors.
Recently I saw an article, where, when the puff balls were dry, they were cut in half to double the number of puffs to put on the layout. I haven't tried this, but it is a way to get more territory covered with the same amount of material.
Also, at the bottom, you need some trees with trunks to give you a transition from foreground to more distant trees.
Nice thing about this hobby is that we can see our own improvements over time and can change things if we want to.
Hope this helps a little.
Good luck,
Richard
Yeah your right about the multi coloring of the puff balls.........I was trying to get a mix of different color leaves for the trees.........another issue I had was that I am using coarse turf from Woodland Scenics ........if I had some finer turf it might have come out better.........I have been looking on the Scenic Express website to see what kind of stuff they have for finer looking trees and foliage.
Step back a few feet. I often see comments that trees like this are unrealistic. But when I look out at the distant mountains in fall, that's exactly what I see. Too far to see indovidual tree trunks, it looks like balls of fluff covering the sides of the hills.
See also I think Jan 93 and the Penny Middle Division layout that Dave Frary did. There's at least one companion picture of what it really does look like around here to compare with the layout - I think he got it. We rarely see this area of the country in the mags, usually it's midwest, west, or New England.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Randy is right, viewing distance does make a difference, so look at it from what will be the normal viewing distance.
Yes, I do use mostly fine turf for my foliage, however, I do mix some coarse in to some to the mixes to give me a little more variation.
Around here the trees of the same species in the same area tend to be a similar color due to soil type. They may be a little different color where the soil changes. Also, trees of a species tend to grow in clumps (though not always). Then another species becomes dominate and it's a different shade. I like to mix in some connifers, either a small stand or a single tree poking through the decidious canopy, which I see around here in many places. (Squirrels or birds working to give us a varied landscape)
Keep praticing and you will see improvement as you go.
Thats just it.......I am viewing it from "Normal" distance.
The way my layout is built you can get up close to the layout and see what is there......or not there.
I agree with cowman, the crown of the trees appear to be pointed at you not towards the sky.
Bob
Don't Ever Give Up
The puff balls may be too varigated individually, but at a distance, they might look better, as others have stated. One thing I see quite often with individual trees or sparse trees is that modellers oftimes forget that a tree is esentially "boxy-shaped". Seeing branches at the foliating time of year isn't really important. I have, for instance, driven up rte eight in Ct many times at all times of the year on business, and have become all too aware that nature that nature is vastly inconsistent in pretty much all settings. If any of you live in this locale and havent driven up that road, I urge you to do so. You can get a lot of perspective from what you see.
Rich C.
Try making a dozen or so single colored puff balls and then attach them to the layout. Make them as near round as you can. See how they look.
When I over look a real forrest scene, I see a lot of rounded tops, close together. Puff balls can give that effect when the right size. If I am looking at yours correctly they appear too large, as well as being too multi-colored.
Remember, it usually take a little pratice to get things to look just as we want them. The nice thing about this hobby is that as we improve we can go back and update as our skills improve.
Have fun,
This is the westen part of PA, but it's the same around here:
Amazing how much it looks like piles of lichen and/or puffballs. Only at the very edge can you see actual tree trunks.
Dennis
A couple of suggestions:
First, if you look carefully at the picture of real fall colours that Randy posted you will notice that individual trees don't have a lot of colour variation. Deciduous trees will be a mix of mostly red, or orange or brownish yellow but a tree that has changed colour will be predominantly one colour and will not have any green leaves still on it. The green that you see in the picture are coniferous trees, and they are completely green. Your hillside shows trees that are mostly of one colour but because you have used a fair bit of red in the yellow trees you have lost the deliniation between individual trees, and the sporadic use of green foliage further confuses the issue. My suggestion is to make a bunch of yellow trees, and a bunch of red trees and then add some conifers into the mix.
Second, Your forest is planted on a pretty steep slope. I realize that you are limited in the space available but you might consider doing a little terracing so you would have some relatively flatter spots where the trees would tend to grow thickly and some steeper spots where you could use a few rock outcroppings to allow you to decend almost vertically with a few scraggly trees clinging to the rocks. At the top edge of the rock outcroppings you could show some tree trunks, like you can see along the shoreline in Randy's picture.
Just some suggestions for you to consider.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
rdgk1se3019
Is there a way to make the slope of the hill less severe? I think it might look better if you could cut some stairstep affect into the foam. Maybe insert a small rock cut or clearing with branches and trunks exposed to help break up the canopy. It looks like you have plenty of room to the right to cut away some of the foam and reshape the hill a bit. Just an inch or two would make a difference.
Having said that I don't think that what you have now looks bad at all.
- Douglas
superbe I agree with cowman, the crown of the trees appear to be pointed at you not towards the sky.
Dear Bob & Friends
I'm just about to make some puffball trees for my son's layout, and the portion of the layout on which I plan to put these trees is steep like doughless's (not quite as steep, but almost).
If the tree is going to be round, how to I make the crown of it respect geo/photo tropism?
Actually, before I get that far, how do I determine what the crown of the tree is?
--Jaddie
Hi Jaddie
The crown of a tree is the very top.
As others have said the trees need to be more round like a ball as their name inplies. Then you will have the illusion that you are seeing a forrest of trees.
The sharp slope also makes creating this illusion more difficult.
With that said this is advice from some one who hasn't made a slope much less a puff ball tree.
Last night I re-read the November MR issue and in it was the tree article that Brook Stover did for his S Scale layout based on the Buffalo Creek & Gulley ...........he used black poly fiber as where I had used a dark green.........I made mine the way MR staff had done for the Virginian project layout........
Mr. Stover used 3M Super 77 spray adhesive...........I used a 50/50 mix of white glue and water..........I noticed he had a lot more ground foam on his trees than I did on mine.
And I did notice he had cut his trees in half..........I`ll have to try that the next time I make more trees.
Scenery is not my strong point as you all can see.............now track and locomotives......hehe.....thats a whole `nother story.
One other suggestion. If you change your slope or even if you just remove and replace, I would use an earth tone (tan or light brown) paint rather than green. If you look at fields, especially in the fall the brown dead grass is the dominate color, even if there is still some green grass poking through. Also, the ground under trees in a forrest sees little sunlight and the dominate color is brown, dried leaves and dead fall.
I did use rock faces on my steepest spots and used some WS Clump Foliage along the edges to represent smaller trees and bushes along the edges of the forrest. I also used some WS Foliage as vines growing up the rock faces.
Just some further ideas.
Yeah about that green..........
........just looking at that florescent neon nuclear green makes me want to throttle someone at the Lowes I bought it from.......it definitely was not the shade that was on the card........I did want something darker like I had before.......
...............but I did get a nice shade of brown from the Amish hardware store just up the street from me a month ago.
And yes I think I will put a few rock out croppings here and there and I`m going to rip off the trees in place and make new ones.
rdgk1se3019 Last night I re-read the November MR issue and in it was the tree article that Brook Stover did for his S Scale layout based on the Buffalo Creek & Gulley ...........he used black poly fiber as where I had used a dark green.........I made mine the way MR staff had done for the Virginian project layout........ Mr. Stover used 3M Super 77 spray adhesive...........I used a 50/50 mix of white glue and water..........I noticed he had a lot more ground foam on his trees than I did on mine.
Dear Dennis & Friends
I read the same article a couple of weeks ago, but my local train store, TrainMaster Models in Buford, Georgia, used cotton balls painted black instead of polyfiber (or maybe cotton balls are just another form of polyfiber), and theirs look great. Theirs are on a steep slope, too. I forgot to ask how they painted the cotton balls and whether they used white glue, hairspray, or 3M adhesive.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford