ebay trees

The truth is, I decided to make these trees as a quick companion piece to the building I was selling. I figured, how hard could it be to make some trees. Three days later....

What I will say is that the trees were overbuilt. In other words, it isn't that there weren't corners that I could have cut, but rather, I added a whole bunch of corners.

Case in point, my basic design for the root system was based off of the War 40k, 3rd ed. version of making craters. So, I got out my Styrofoam, I got out my knife, and I cut forty or fifty little triangular wedges to arrange in a circle around the trees. Truth be told, this was absolutely unnecessary. Once you put the plaster of paris on, unless these wedges are an inch high and three inches long, the effect is negligible. Had I to do it over again, I could have achieved the same effect by by making 'O's of Styrofoam about an 1/2" to an 1" across which would have saved me an hour's worth of time, but no matter. I did all the work while watching episodes from The Office- British version. Man, that show is funny.

I'm not a big fan of plaster, which is what the ground is made of, mainly because it cracks, but having read the message boards over at Hirst Arts (love those guys), I figured out to put sand into the mix to strengthen it up. I decided to shred speaker wire and add that as well in order to get that root system look. This was aided immeasurably by the glop nature of the mix because bits of Styrofoam were left open to the air and they melted under spray paint. That's a trick I always enjoy...if it can be controlled, which I did. So, it looks like some of the plates have gopher holes and shit like that. Crazy as all hell. As for paint...what? Brown undercoat, camel drybrush, tan highlights. Nothing too spectacular. I was going for trees on a flood plain which means that the dirt has to be yellowish brown. The sand in the mix made natural rough patches which I painted as moss. In any case, if you read my blog, you know by basic feeling about two sentence painting tips: they're useless.

As for the trees. Trees are cheap, its everything else about them that's expensive. I took a set of plastic "make 'em yourself" trees and began by gluing and winding Spanish moss around them. This gives the impression of dead branches sticking out and the kind of character of a wild tree. Basically, I gave them all the horrible twigs and shit that generally screw up my frizbee golf game. Then I applied the major foliage in a few shades so as to give the impression of a forest of a few types of competing trees. I would have added ground cover too, but Russ has made me all but paranoid about making the bases presentable.

The trees are removable from the base, with a bit of care, which makes the area extremely playable (though without trees, is it still a forest? Sorry). Overall, I like the terrain piece, but I did not like how long it took me to build and paint. There are faster ways. I know them. I should have done them. Regardless, no sense keeping too many of these forest plates around so I put up on Ebay. Enjoy!