The Road to Singapore: Malaya 1941-42

[rtfoe]

Good effort Tim. Are you able to thin the main stem as rubber trees can be quite slender and they harvest better when younger. First tree at the top of your last image would be just right. The estates I've been to have stems roughly a foot in diameter and they would all be like clones in a row. The scaling down would also help from having the trees overpower the scene I think. Not necessary to follow my suggestion. Thought I'd just mention it. I'm trying to find pictures I took for reference but seem to have misplaced it.

Can't seem to paste the image I have of tappers tapping which will show size and scale.

Cheers,
Richard

[rtfoe]

Tim, looking at your first reference pictures of the battle may give an indication of the thickness of the tree. Also I have inserted an image I found that may help.



Cheers,
Richard

[TIM FORSTER]

Sorry, work has kept me from posting for a while. Here is some more progress on the trees and landscape.

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Having given the terrain a layer of Das I then gave it a liberal coating of Vallejo Earth Texture. This is great stuff - it just covers so well and gives instant colour and texture. None of this has been done with much care because almost every millimetre is going to be covered with vegetation of some kind. For the tarmac road I used Galeria Sand Texture Gel.

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Now back to the trees.

Richard, I have taken on board your comments and I welcome many more. Looking at the images of the Muar River action, it may be that the trees at that time (or perhaps in that area) were not as neatly cultivated as they are today. For example, they branch out quite a bit lower than thos I have seen on the web.

It may not be obvious from the shots above, but I went back to work on some of them, sanding them, adding some more Artex / PVA mix and then sanding them again. The aim was to try and make them as rounded and regular as I could; these aren't supposed to be gnarly old oak trees!

Although I'm not 100%, I feel that this is the best I am going to achieve unless I start all over again.

I then gave them a blast of colour which I mixed from Vallejo acrylic primer (plentiful and cheap). The colours I used were simply what I had: black, white, German dark yellow and track colour. As I went I added more white to give them some highlights. It's a solid undercoat for what I plan to do next.

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[scottie3158]

Tim,
Coming on very nicely.

[minitnkr]

Much improved trees. All looking good. PaulE

[rtfoe]

Tim, yes the trees are looking better. There was once a comment from a Japanese tourist travelling on one of our trunk roads and said that our jungle was so neat not knowing he was passing rubber plantations with their neat rows of trees. I think there were strict instructions on planting rubber trees for best yields of the sap. I used to think it was done so the tappers were safe from tiger attacks. There weren't any machinse to tap and its done by hand to this day so the wide berth must be to let the canopy of leaves to breath and letting in some sunlight.

Cheers,
Richard.

[Andy Belsey]

Looking great Tim!
Andy

[TIM FORSTER]

Thanks everyone.

The next stage was to give the trees some more colour.

Looking at the images from Muar River, this one provides a useful close-up of the bark pattern on these rubber trees.



This pattern of blotches, with the lighter bark peeling off to reveal the darker bark beneath, actually looks quite a lot like the plane trees that are very common here in London.



Painting the trees was a little like a German uniform camouflage, except on a larger scale. I used three Vallejo colours: tan earth, aged white and cement.



These were applied with a brush in fairly random patterns and then the steps were repeated with the same tones mixed slightly with one another. Sometimes I covered quite a large area with a connected pattern of colour, sometimes I used spots.

I then repeated these steps using cotton buds to 'stamp' the same colours onto the trunks in an attempt to replicate those distinctive larger spots. It's a little like doing an Impressionist painting. I managed to get through all seven trees in a couple of hours.

All in all I'm quite happy with the outcome. I'm hoping the pattern will stand out better once the foliage and bushes are all in place to provide a contrast. To give everything a head start I painted the edges of the base black because this always lightens the tones and helps the colours to pop out.

[Tim Marlow]

Tree bark looks spot on. Nicely observed Tim.

[Andy Belsey]

Excellent Tim,
Andy

[scottie3158]

Loverly work Tim a great eye for detail.

[rtfoe]

You've got it spot on Tim. :thumb2: :thumb2:

Cheers,
Richard

[JR]

Great work on the trees Tim.
Esp like the layout, gives some depth to the diorama.

[outrunner]

Really love the trees.

Andy.

[TIM FORSTER]

Thankyou gentlemen.

Let the foliage commence!

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Foliage can be one of the most difficult parts of tree making.

We know there are various methods out there, but I have previously worked with products from Mininatur (called Silflor in the US) when I made the olive tree for my Italian diorama (and I also used it for ivy on the bridge).

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They make a large range of different leaf types and use a sort of netting with the individual leaves attached.

There are pros and cons with this stuff. The biggest advantage to me is the fact that the actual leaves are well stuck on to the netting and so you are less likely to suffer from the sort of 'arborial dandruff' that you can get with other methods.

The structure of the netting also provides you with that all-important twig layer which would otherwise take an awfully long time to make. I have see people make this out of sea foam, for instance, but it seems very fiddly and I simply wasn't prepared to contemplate this for my SEVEN trees.

The disadvantage is that the sheets, although three-dimensional, are quite thin and so it is hard to give them the shape of the real foliage, rather than a tree that has simply been draped with sheets of the fake stuff.

To give my trees a bit more depth, I actually used two different types: Beech Foliage Spring 920-31 and Beech Foliage Summer 920-32. I started with the latter, which is darker, to build up the foliage which would be at the bottom or the middle and then used the lighter spring version to cover the upper / outer parts of the tree.

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I have to say that I was very pleased / relieved with the result! It's also good to see how the colouring of the tree trunks seems to stand out more now that it has something to compete against.

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