Good Autumn Look

They make for some decent sized good autumn looking trees. I have been looking here in my area of Southeast TX for potential tree material, and have noticed some larger bushes in the ditches along side of the 1:1 scale tracks. I need to bring a hedge clipper with me to work to harvest the branches off of those bushes that would produce similar size trees to what you have pictured on this post. Good job on the selection, most commercial model trees are way too small to look right, and the sizes you have selected are more realistic to scale.

Good Autumn look

Thanks for the positive feedback.  As far as pickin' and grinning out in the field, take your scale eyes along.  I always "see" the best and biggest first.  Later, I go back in and literally stop in one place for a few minutes and look around me.  I am constantly amazed at what I missed in the small to intermediate size material, but also how hard I have to look to see the really small brush that is suitable.

Try looking along farmer's fields, too (with permission).  The plowing and spraying cycle keeps the plant size under control.  It is those that you see here.  Many were weeds my wife sprays all summer to keep our fence row under control next to the corn crop; they are pretty small and work well.  The un-sprayed and mature weed that are the source of many of these plants is over seven feet tall when grown out.  They still work but they are usually slower in drying out because their root system is pretty deep.  Might not be an issue with "drying" time in your part of the country, though.

I have only done rudimentary playing round with adding foliage.  The delicate nature of the weeds lend themselves to the fall/winter look, but there are certainly more that would make a suitable base for some sort of foliage application.

Cheers.

Another shot

Here is another shot. 

Trees

They look real good as a naked tree armature, but what would they look like with Autumn foliage applied, have you tried any that way? Also do you have any idea what the plant/weed is? Did you just go out into a field in the woods or a farmers field, into a park what.

Richard

Trees

Hi Richard.  See my post above.  I pick a multitude of weeds so there really is no"one" type but there does seem to be  a more common variety.  I'll ask some friends who likely know what these weeds are specifically.  I had tried a couple of half-hearted apps with foliage and was un-happy with the results.  i was primarily looking at increasing the feel of the fine branches seen when the leaves come off.  For you, though, I offer the pic below.  This is poly sprayed with cheap brown plastic paint then hit with cheap hairspray and tumbled in a container of dark brown fine ground foam and some green of a larger size.  I didn't have any "fall" colors but it would be easy to do.  Not too bad.  I would use less fine brown and more of the greener foam if I were doing it again.  The caution that I offer is that it is hard to apply the poly to the really finely scaled details so I would use base weeds that have more bulk to the individual "limbs" to avoid breakage.  Cheers.

Fall foliage

Richard got me going.  i spent longer pulling material together to do the tree above and the thirty seconds it took gave okay results.  I wondered what a minute or two could do.  The tree below was made using the same weed trunks seen in the earlier shots.  Poly was applied lightly and hit with a light dusting of brown plastic paint (poly is plastic so plastic paint adheres).  A little blend of very fine ground foam in three shades of green,  Then a colored application of fine chalk in fall colors as the underlying shades.  The larger "leaves" are Crayola sidewalk chalk scraped on with a hobby blade.  This chalk is poor for weathering, my purpose for buying it, because it comes off in tiny chunks rather than as a dust.  But, as you can see, those same chunks are scale-sized leaves.  I add a few and let the eyes and mind fill in the details.  Better.  Might have to call this a late fall rather than early spring layout. A little light brown paint over-spray to tone it all down and some "leaves" on the ground using the same fine and Crayola chalks.  Better work on the trunk at the ground and some wiser color selection for the leaves and it could start to look pretty good.  Still, about two minutes not counting time to find all the supplies.  Cost?  About 5 cents at most.  Maybe one more using only the Crayola chalk as the foliage. 

The outcome?

Here is one with a little effort to the left of the tree seen above.   Still only two or three minutes once you get a technique down.

Nice Winter Trees!

Looks like you've hit upon a gold mine for winter trees! I'm modeling in late fall/snowless period of early winter and am still looking for a good accessible material source. You've got a good look with your modeling and I particularly like your second attempt at a late fall tree with a few late hanging leafs, very nice effect. There are some varieties of decidious that hold their leaves through winter. Combining these with some evergreens makes a beautiful effect!

One of my favs...

Dried flower stalks from sedum plants make great trees too!!

Sedums

Hi all,

Sedums work well. These are done up as smaller O scale gum trees.Some of the lower level scrub is cheap wire armature trees to fill in around the sedums. 

The foliage on these can be thinned out before painting to give a bare armature, if necessary. The thinned out armatures would probably be more suitable for US deciduous trees in autumn.     

Sedum and Oz

Every time I see sedum trees, I think "Oz".  I saw your picture, John, and thought "Oz" and there you are --  you are from Oz!  

I've used sedum on my US layout.  The better trees get several "trunks" wired together with the flower/seed heads bent to horizontal directions to form clusters facing different directions.  Think how a firework rocket looks when it explodes into a ball.  Something like that, then dusted with foam.

Re: Sedum and Oz

Hi ackislander and all

If you use a tapered balsa core, you can drill and insert the smaller sedum heads at different angles to give a you that look. If you then use modelling putty or similar, you can build up big buttress roots for really mature trees if you need to. 

Here's some +100' footers in O scale on Dan Pickard's "Splitters Gorge" diorama as displayed at the 2013 Australian Narrow Gauge Convention. For scaling, the diorama case is over 3' high. The bigger Regnans Eucalypts regularly broke 200' high, so the trees in this diorama are only tiny tots.

A closer look at the canopy of the bigger trees

and the Splitter's hut and the Splitter doing some gold-panning, dwarfed by the trunk of the left tree in the previous photo.

But this is starting to get a long way away both in style and location from fall trees in the eastern USA, 

Wow

Great look.  He is NOT modeling my neighborhood.  The effort we go to to achieve our vision, huh?  As for my work thank you all for your kind comments.  Thanks to Richard I have stumbled on what I think is a perfect method to create the look that I am going for: a late fall look with precious little vegetation remaining and a hint of fall color.  Additionally, I think that the thing that I needed for the best outcome was to get the see-through look.  I don't think it would work for the Splitter's Gorge look, nor should it.  As that artist found, the method that worked was a different one than I'm using.  The key is to play around and see what works for YOUR world.  I'll share another photo that is very close to the areas seen in the earlier pics.  As Lance explained in his article this month, the key is to get different focus points.  As you'll notice, the foreground tree (the same seen in the "Outcome" response above) is not in focus because there is so little for the camera to get the focus point on.  Great when you see it in person, but really tough to appreciate when you try to shrink photo size and quality to get into the blog.

I am sadly disappointed that some of you are struggling to find these gems in the fields around you (if there even are any fields).  I drove 80 miles today through north-central Ohio and could see millions now that I know how to look.  Keep trying, though.

Cheers.

Mike from Sunbury

Foliage color -

I find as I 'build' a tree, the trunk should be (predominantly) gray, with brown as a topcoat.

The INNER foliage should be Dark (green for spring/summer) and the Outermost foliage should be brighter... BUT it's also more realistic if One Side of the crown suggests the sunlight direction... thus is also a bit darker than the top/ bright side of the tree.

I only wish my shrubs grew faster... I found boxwood has a fine branching that can be adapted to many tree species (especially if stems are wired together and pruned to shape).  But many of you will realize Boxwood is a Very Slow grower (and very hard wood, too).  Thus, spring pruning gives most opportunity to collect it.

A bit more on sedums

You can as was stated bend the 'limbs' to different angles as well as cannabalize a few for those limbs and glue more onto the trunk for a fuller tree.

Search Google for A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs: Northeastern and North-Central United and you will get a book that shows the silhouttes of many central and northern US trees. Helpful stuff when creating the armatures for trees. I wouldn't waste time on back scene specimens but if you live in the central and eastern US and want a decidious tree at the fore ground a large sycamore is hard to beat. Your visitors will will take notice too since it looks much more like a real tree than a typical model tree. Still, back scene trees do benefit from this sort of thing even if it is just because it keeps your from creating identical puff balls. Shaping them to be taller and pointed in addition to round helps a great deal.

Great

Very life-like trees. Thanks for sharing. 

Goldenrod

Goldenrod is also a great "weed" for making trees.

Trees

I really wish those of you who suggest using "weeds" for trees would take the time and trouble to identify those weeds you are using by scientific name.  Your work is beautiful, but the rest of us cannot replicate it unless we know exactly what plant you are using, and since plant common names vary wildly by region, please use the scientific name!  It is not a big deal to find someone at a local community college to identify the plant in question by the scientific name.  Please do so, so the rest of us can see exactly what you are using, and more importantly, if it is found in our area!

Free Trees

Last week avoiding the 'Baricades' from the yellow jackets here in France and taking little country lanes trying to get to work I came across these dry mini trees. They grow in clusters along the road. I harvested a forest of them. But I do not know the name. My layout "The AnneliesVille RR" is rather late spring - early summer so I'll have to turn them green.

Hereby also some pics of 'Cedrus Altlantica' Pine trees I made.

Thanks for this post Mike !  Interesting.

Greetings from France (in big trouble) , Filip

Origan.

The weeds that Filip picked up are probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregano

It looks like it does NOT grow naturally in America, alas!

I love to use it, too.

Goldenrod

One of the area modelers is a botanist.  He said there were about 8 different varieties of goldenrod.  My suggestion is pick the ones that look like trees.   

Solidago canadensis

is the one I prefer.

Wow! Oregano?

My wife grew a 10' by 20' patch of oregano in a garden at our cottage that was otherwise going to weeds two years ago.  It still looked healthy last summer.  I'll have to see if it's still viable next spring! (there's a foot of snow on it right now).

Thanks!

Blair

Don't worry, it is surely

Don't worry, it is surely strong enough! But you will have to wait til the end of fall, when the flowers are dry.