In the beginning, I didn't even care
about base making. Then I started to make bases in order to make my
project units transportable and more presentable. Then I got into
that competition thing, saw all those nice little dioramas and found
it interesting to create such little vignettes as well.
One of the things that are vital for
larger vignettes are trees and bushes. Two years ago, I watched a
workshop on how to build trees on basis of a wire framework, held by
Das_Dirk (
http://dirchs-modellbauwelt.jimdo.com/)
who is also a member of Bennos' forum. These trees looked great, but
when I tried to make one, I ended up with... well... wire scrap. So I
threw it all apart and concentrated on other things. At FIGZ 2012, I
bought a single figure and spontaneously had a scenery in mind –
unfortunately, this scenery would require a tree of some size. I
looked around, but all ready-made trees available on the market
looked either odd or where ridiculously expensive. With a little luck
I managed to get an individual one – made by another great modeller
whos' work can be seen on
http://bookman-miniaturen.blogspot.de/2012/09/baume.html
Well. So far, so good. As I told you, I
bought some nice hussar miniatures at FIGZ in Arnhem recently. Again,
I had a special scenery in my mind, which would require some smaller
trees and bushes for the hussar scouts to hide between. Mmph. Tree
building problem again.
Nothing against the arts of Bookman –
but I found it way too expensive to have all the required plants to
be made. I saw the cool trees that Ralf presented at FIGZ and
suggested these to be a real solution. I tried to bribe the guys
(Ralf and Dirk) to make some trees for me, but they refused. I
suspect that they wanted me to do it all on my own. So that's where I
started.
Following the advice of Ralf, I bought
myself some things:
Price: around 20 Euro. Which doesn't
seem bad for approximately 30 trees/bushes.
Look at the amount of basic material in the box:
So how does it work? Very fast and
simple.
At first, I prepared two smaller nature
tree parts, cut off lower branches, etc. Smaller trees usually don't
have an expanded rootage and as the trees will be simply sticked into
the basing material, it was not needed to create a rootage base at
all.
First step: I brushed the trunks with
wood glue and then dispersed sawdust upon them. Laying on my desk,
they had time to dry out overnight.
Next day, I carefully took them up with
a plier and sprayed the glue upon the branches. The UHU spray glue
works out fine – nearly pinpoint accuracy. I just dispersed some
artificial foliage material onto the branches, blowed away the loose
parts and – here you are, two small trees!
Well – I have to clean away the green
parts that by mistake attached to the trunk and then drybrush the
whole thing. Next time, I'm going to paint the trunks and branches
before applying the foliage. That will certainly look much better,
but for the start, I'm pretty happy with the results. Thanks for the
inspiration, Ralf!
