My bench is still child like but getting better. Art Hill posted a posting about making trees and I ran out and bought all the stuff he listed. Due to car problems (Dayonta came home on the hook) so I have not got started on them yet. But I was inspired and with tips of his and others I decided to play on the hill tonight.
Hill in sacle is a mer 107 foot high but is 13' feet long. It is all lift off sections. Few PIC.
Now what I am sort of proud off. In there other PIC you saw Super Tress, which out of the box is OK at there best. After reading Arts postings I decided to try and make them better and I think I did. On my shopping list was hair spray (at 51 I don't think I have ever asked where the air spray was).
Well I had air spary and gound foam and a few beers so what the heck. Sparyed the Super weeds and used a couse yellow gound foam. I did this 3 to 4 times on the thin weeds. I all so turned the weeds up side down to make the thicker. Next I used a fine off green foam, that helped fill the trees more and add color. Then a fine green foam for the right color.
For the old timers and skilled people here, theses are old trick I am sure, but to me I am finaly making a good thick wooded area. So to me it is a little bit of a big deal.
Mr Hill, your tress will be beind the hill.
Cuda Ken learing again
I hate Rust
cuda ken, you are looking good. Your learning is well up on the curve. 2 suggestions:
1. You need more underbrush and stuff between the trees. Forest floors are not neat unless you have a park.
2.Your foam cliffs need more small scale carving and ripping and scratching and less plaster. There is still a little too much "frosting on the cake" look. I try to be very messy and very careless and dig and cut and slice all kinds of detail. It takes practice, but you will learn to see that in real life the detail is incredible and it is easy to duplicate with time. For some of my sheerest cliffs I use almost no plaster on the foam, and very little paint, just enough for color. Some of the verticle lines represent drill holes from the blasting.
An old pic to show what I think is on the right track.
By the way, I have a mopar past as well. I raced a Golden Commander Super Stock wagon in 1960 and held the state record for a while. The panchos did me in and I switched to gasers.
Funny, I was going to say how much I liked the rocks that have that "frosting on the cake" look. They look like they have been eroded by a lot of fast-moving water. It's not an uncommon scene to come across when hiking in New England.
Of course, geology is a very personal thing. Whatever gets your rocks on.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Thanks for the close up PIC of your cliff Mr Hill. On the next section I will cut the rock more. It did not really start out as a rock faces but more of a faces of dirt. Section behinde the repair buliding is a rock faces but I did not mess with details because it cannot be seen.
I will thank you for your kind words and other help you have given me. (bet he is pointing at my PIC and telling is Grand Daughter "Honey, a grown man cannot do as good as you"! )
MisterBeasley, it was not plained but the eroded look is what I got. Maybe it was in the back of my mind but there are a lot of hills I drive by (Like we have a lot of hills in IL)
Few of the new trees thanks to Mr Hill.
First batch of 6 I used a stained doel but shows up light with the shutter speed I used. Second batch 7 I painted the trucks brown. There blue shows up a little more but again I think it is shutter speed letting to much light in. In person there is just a hint of blue to added deepeth.
Fun side note, I did the trees at work behinde the store I run. Ladys next door beauty shop keep making fun of me beacuse, well the where bored and my friends. Keept going ""Your tress are Blue!". They liked them when they where done. 9 more trunks watting at work.
Cuda Ken
Good comments Mr B. The freshness of the rock wall makes a large difference. One of the tricks with dirt work on a cliff side is to finish with a paint brush and make sure the brush marks simulate that way the dirt flows as water flows. The relationship of dirt to the rocks is a troublesome point of interest for me. Some of the guys are a lot better at this than I, but I love trying. HMinkey does some great work with erosion.
Cudaken, you are certainly proving the point of practice. Things are looking better as you learn from your own work. Thanks for sharing. We re all learning this together.
P.S. Don't you just love the reactions of observers as they discover what you are really doing?
What'ya mean "like we have a lot of hills in IL"? My youngest daughter (back in 1995) coming to see us when we had just moved to northern Illinois commented that there are no hills in IL. As far as she was concerned the only hills in IL were the man made ones for the overpasses over the interstate.
However she wasn't exactly correct. There are all kinds of hills in IL. Up near Peoria in the middle of the "flat lands" you will find a state park that has an 80+ feet waterfall hidden back down a 1/2 mile trail through rugged bluffs "in IL". When we discovered it, we only could say WOW!!
And I love the hills in the bluffs along the Great River Road north of Alton.
Looking at your layout and the latest set of pictures of your efforts with the trees and the rock outcrops I just want to say .
I'm amazed at your enthusiam. I'm just learning to make trees and rock outcrops on my railroad now and I've already learned a lot from looking at others work and hearing the comments that others are saying. I'm especially interested in whatever Arthill has to say.
I'm so anxious to try the furnace filter method myself. I wish I had the money to go out and buy everything that I need to try out all of the neat ideas I see posted. My model railroad to-do list is getting bigger and bigger by the day. But a'las I have limited money to devote to my railroad, and I probably should devote a lot less time to it (but as much as I try, I just can't pull myself away).
CudaKen, you made a comment in one of your posts that you live a couple of miles away from K-10's and you wish you had someone who was interested in sharing your model railroad with you. Give me a private post message. We may not live too far apart.
Woodlandtoots
Yep Art I like the feedback, it keeps me going. With out local train friends I count on the feed back of folks here on the site to encourge me. That may change soon, I just got my days off changed so I will be able to run at K-10 on train nights. Might make some train friends there and learn the joy other's have of running a like like train session. (spell check)
Woodlandtoots, PM is sent. Yep there are some great bluffs in Alton. My town will be based on Alton down town. More that likely I will leave out the grain elevator. Town will be about 4' X 8' and 2 foot tall. Couple of the PIC I like.
As far as the cost of the tress, they are pretty cheap to make. Ruff guess II would say I will be able to make around 40 tress as I get better from what I bought.
$4.00 fliter
$2.00 Skeers around 40
$1.20 for 4 dowel rods 36"
$2.00 Hair spray
$1.20 paint from wally world 2 driffrent brown's and 2 gray's
$7.00 for the static grass (I bought 2 driffrent colors so $15.00) First color has made 10 of the tress and looks unused.
$17.40 apx for 40 trees is a pretty good return.
Hills are getting close to being done, but whats next? Should I start the town or the new bech section that will be the K-10 Mining company? K-10 Mining will added around another 78 feet of track not counting hidden stagging, but town will add more detail. Hum, need to sleep on that somemore.
Sure hope you live close by.