Dead trees

One thing to keep in mind Marc is your time period. I suspect that all those dead trees are a fairly recent event. If you are modeling say the early 70's or earlier they were probably very much alive. Something to look into.

Jack

Tree lines?

Are those trees in straight lines like they look to me in the photo? 

I ask because it sort of resembles the northern Oregon coast many years ago. They had a series of large forest fires (cf. Tillamook Burn) and the boy scouts went out and walked in straight lines replanting. Those were spruce too, I believe. 

No straight lines

It must just be the photo, this area has probably been burned several times but never replanted.  The size of trees in these photos are about as big as they get before the next fire.  No forestry industry up here, too small and too far from a mill.  The only thing they are used for is firewood.

Black spruce in this part of the world are generally small, scraggly and always seem to only have a few live branches at the very top.  The photos are pretty typical bush in the north, as many dead trees as living ones.  It's going to be entertaining to figure out how to model them properly.

Marc Simpson

Bottle Brush Trees

Marc,

I would suggest making the trees using the bottle brush technique.  Just search for the technique on MRH and you will find descriptions, but basically it is fibers wound between two wires using a hand crank or battery drill.  When you wind the trees, use a lot less jute or hemp fiber along the lower trunk than normally used for all-green spruce or fir trees.  The few sparse fibers along the lower portion of the trunk becomes the dead branches.  This will leave a lot of exposed twisted wire trunk.  Usually I plant trees so the branches come to the ground and there is no exposed trunk, so I do not treat the trunk.  In towns, where someone trimmed up the branches to mow, I wrap the trunk with brown floral tape.  In your case here, continue the wrap up the trunk, leaving slight gaps in the tape to let the sparse fibers leak out, but hiding the wire.  Give it a haircut to shape it, then airbrush paint the trunk with brown paint, and airbrush on a thin gray coat for accent color.  Dead ones get all grey.  The natural color of the jute or hemp fiber is exactly right for the dry dead branches, but can be accented a bit with gray dry brushed color as well.  Finish up by flocking the live tops with green ground foam.

possible method

This method looks promising. (I spotted it on the homegrown trees thread)

of course, yours will be much smaller with fewer needles, but I think the trunk effect here is about right.

Small Trees

A scale is in order Marc. Most of the techniques for making HO trees would produce too large of a tree for the areas you are showing. Static grass good for swamps. Lots of toothpick trees will be needed.

Comment on Trees in North

Marc - I would note that in your upland shot it shows jack pine with a lichen, blueberry understory, not black spruce. Jack pine are often the dominant species in dry, sandy upland environments that are poor in nutrients. This type of terrain is frequently burned, hence the large amount of bleached dead stuff in the understory. Burns, on average every 40 years in the Athabasca. The black spruce will dominate the wetter areas with birch and aspen finding the middle ground if there are any deciduous trees. Some good references available from the SK MOE to help with accuracy in terrain on both sandy/glacial terrains and Shield terrains. 

Mark