Forest Terrain - European Style (LAST UPDATE 21.02.2010)

[Cheeky Monkey]

That is perfect!    I too have that book. A couple of others that are invaluable resources are:
http://www.amazon.com/Terrain-Modelling-Masterclass-Richard-Windrow/dp/1841760625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263837375&sr=1-1
and :
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Terrain-Modelling-Masterclass/dp/1841769754/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263837375&sr=1-2
Osprey Publishing has a large variety of books on the subject of modeling and terrain making. They are my bibles of landscape modeling.

[OSHIROmodels]

Wow, the bar has just been raised again   

Wonderful stuff there Admiral. *scuttles off to have a go a the lilly pad thing*

cheers

James

[oxiana]

That is perfect!    I too have that book. A couple of others that are invaluable resources are:
http://www.amazon.com/Terrain-Modelling-Masterclass-Richard-Windrow/dp/1841760625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263837375&sr=1-1
and :
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Terrain-Modelling-Masterclass/dp/1841769754/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263837375&sr=1-2
Osprey Publishing has a large variety of books on the subject of modeling and terrain making. They are my bibles of landscape modeling.

About time I invested in a terrain modelling book like that, thanks. I'm off to see Mr Amazon...

[silvana]

Very inspirational - as always your work is outstanding. Thanks for sharing the lovely pics.

[General Roos]

Love it! 

[Christian]

What did you use to make the water?

[cheetor]

Lovely.

The finished table should look spectacular.

[Admiral Benbow]

What did you use to make the water?

NOCH 2K Wasser-Gel, which has the consistency of honey when poured:

http://www.noch.de/de/produktkatalog/artikel_detail.php?noch_artikelid=0060870

Lovely.
The finished table should look spectacular.

Thanks. But I'm working on forest terrain for a 50 x 50 cm part of our new Thirty-Years-War-table, not for a railroad layout ...
(Although I would love to do so  )

But even then, in my experience it's always the little details which make unspectacular stuff a bit more special.
 

[Prof.Witchheimer]

Michael, you astonish us again and again with your skills and projects. Very inspiritional!

[Admiral Benbow]

My goal for this project was to spend no money at all and only use stuff I already had laying around. For the deciduous trees I had a bag full of dried pieces of roots, collected on some holiday walks in Bavaria.





I also used a bunch of twisted twigs bought from a florists shop some time ago, I really don't know what this is called, but it has a natural look like small tree branches already.



As I had no experience building model trees and had only read a lot about creating them, I just took some pieces of roots, removes the one or other broken twig, cut one end flat and glued this to a cardboard square with white glue, additionally secured with a small brass screw from underneath. The cardboard will later be glued to my terrain pieces, that way the trees will have a firm foundation on the base.

But I wasn't quite happy with these constructs, they looked too unnaturally, not like real tree structures.



So, for the next ones I looked for a good looking roots piece for the stem and planted the branches from the bottom up myself using parts of the twig material. A hole was drilled into the stem, and the twigs were glued in with a hot glue gun. This way you only need to wait a couple of seconds for the glue to cool and set. After finishing a tree this way, a mixture of brown acrylic colour, some dirt powder and water was brushed roughly around the glued areas to cover the shiny glue spots and get a smooth transition from stem to branch. The hot glue gun was also used to simulate some roots branching out at the bottom of the stem.

A lot of ideas and techniques were based on similar things from Elladan and his inspiring website http://www.elladan.de/040%20Bocage%203/040.htm.







These trees were much more to my liking ...

It was time to start the first test base for ground structures and materials and to test fibres and flocking. I used some single roots of another kind and glued them directly to the pre-cut hardboard-base. Twisted out rubberised horsehair was ripped into small pieces and glued onto the twigs with UHU-craftglue.





The horsehair was airbrushed with Tamiya dark-green, the base got its foundation with brown-coloured ready-mixed filler from the DIY.



More next time. Thanks for your interest!
 

[Captain Blood]

Brilliant as ever 

How does the Noch Water compare to Woodland Scenics 'Realistic Water' (if you've ever used that)? Sounds a similar product...

[Cheeky Monkey]

Excellent use of natural materials. Are you going to flock the trees to add a little more realism to them or leave them as they are? Either way they look great. Having spent some time in the western US I was able to gather some sagebrush (aka. tumbleweed) which is another great thing to use for tree structures. A walk through the local forest always yields some great things to use for scenery.

[oxiana]

Glorious. 

That's a great link to the terrain building site too - very inspirational.

[Gluteus Maximus]

Those roots are spectacularly good as trees! So easy to use, rather than farting around twisting wire etc. The pond is so lifelike - I love a good water-feature so I might try and get some of that wasser-gel. Again, so much better than varnish etc.

[Christian]

I have huge trouble finding roots like those ones. Aside from digging them up out of the ground, where do I start looking? :S (Yes, this occurs to me to be a silly question but I'm going to ask it anyway!!!)