Illinois Central/Canadian National Champaign Branch

[MVW]

Beautifully done.

Jim

[packers#1]

Very nice sir, the backdrop blends nicely

[nscalemike]

Thanks for the kind comments everyone!  Now I need to get to making trees.

[nscalemike]

So I wanted to try to get some of my SuperTrees done and I figured before I go to far I would post a sample here to see what you guys think.  All I did was shape them to size, spray painted the entire tree with a flat gray spray paint primer, then sprinkled on the leaves.  I mixed in some of Scenic Express fall colors, autumn red and aspen yellow, along with a light green, which I think is actually called spring green.  Any one with experience do you need to boil these trees first?  Also, I used the wet paint for the initial application of leaves, and if I needed to get it a bit more full I hit it with extra hold hair spray then put the second application of leaves.  This began just to get a quick idea of the look, but if I could skip the boiling stage that would be great!



The tallest tree is about 60'-65' tall.  Going for that early to mid fall look, leaves changing colors, some are falling, some are still green.  As I observed last month, really anything goes it seems, but I'm thinking the colors might still be too bright.  The green looks good, need to add in some other shades, and I think the yellow blends well with the backdrop yellows, but the red I think should be a bit more brown.  I'm worried if there is only a few red trees, although it seemed that was the case in real life, they might really look odd and not prototypical.  One thing I did notice alot was the muticolored trees,  green down low still and red or yellow near the top or off to one side.  Tried to replicate that on a couple of those too.

They are not glued in yet so nothing is final.  I can scrap them and start over, rearrange, etc.  I need to add in lower growth too and still address that sky, so they will be coming out at least once anyway.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks,
Mike

[GaryHinshaw]

My honest opinion is that the yellow is a bit too much and the red is way too much.  Judging by your nice backdrop photo, which looks like a very dry autumn scene, I would go mostly for a blend of pale yellow and pale green (similar to your tree on the right), with one or two tan and pale orange trees for contrast.   Also, given the height of your model trees, you could make the backdrop photo a bit larger to better match the height of the models.  But it looks like the photo will mostly be obscured anyway, so maybe it's a moot point.

I love the overall effect you're going for, and I'm sure you'll do it justice.  Nice to see the progress!

[nscalemike]

Thanks Gary for the input.  I probably have a bottle of red that will go to waste now, but I agree, too bright.  Any suggestions on how to tone the yellow down?  Or, just try a different shade?  Maybe spray it with a mist of brown or green?   I agree with your assessment of light yellows, pale greens and a few tans/dark oranges.  Maybe some trial and error later.
Thanks again

[Chris333]

I have some AMSI ground foam colors that look toned down, you might want to look them up. I think if the red was more burgundy it would help and blend a little more instead of a tree being a single color.

[nscalemike]

Thanks Chris, would you recommend the fine, medium, or course foam from them?  Looks like they have some good colors too.  The blending is the big problem with fall I think.  I feel the yellow tree is ok based on some I see, but a majority do not change colors all at once. I am thinking I might do green, the airbrush a yellow tone to it, so areas heavier than others. I believe once you have the proper color selection and process down a fall scene would be as easy as summer.  Just repeat, over and over. Its getting the right colors and process that causes the problems!   I know it can be done though.

[JSL]

Come to my neck of the woods and the trees looks like that

[Chris333]

I'm allergic to scale trees     , but I can say the fine, med, coarse is pretty much the same as Woodland Scenics size wise. I remember seeing people using a few different blends instead of straight colors. More on the color, you have a perfect reference right behind the trees. Wouldn't it be nice to buy photo strips like that.

We got 2-3 inches of snow today and the area under one tree is all green because the leaves didn't fall yet...

[GaryHinshaw]

AMSI/fine is a good starting point.  Here is one suggestion for colour selection:



It's not really advisable to colour match from photos on a monitor, but for trees it should be fine.  I would try to blend them as much as possible.  You should also get some stock colours to fill out the arsenal, such as:  Leaf Green, Hunter Green, Eucalyptus, Maple Red, Fall Orange.  But staying with a mostly muted palette will probably look awesome!

[mark dance]

I have modeled a couple of fall scenes and am not really happy with any of them.  Even though I have tried to closely match fall colours from photos of the modeled area, they always strike me as too garish in person.  I have never really wondered why this is but thinking about it it might be that the fall colours we find so attractive are attractive because they aren't common.  As a result fall colours may not pass my brain's  "average-enough" test ?  who knows.

Anyways I have done a couple of things to tone down fall colours on trees planted on the layout made with various ground foams varying from pale green through muted yellow to red.  The first is to lightly airbrush all the trees in the scene with a light brown (I can't remember if it was dilute rail brown or a sienna...probably the latter) and then I also have sprinkled all the trees with a crushed dried leaf material.  Both are attempts to mute the colours and blend all the trees towards a similar colour point .  Here are a couple of shots to give the impression...sorry, but the focus of the photos were the trains not the foliage and I guess I may have sub consciously tried to draw attention way from the fall colours so the trains remained the focal point.







I hope the suggestions are helpful. 

md

[nscalemike]

Gary, Thanks for the color recommendations.  I had looked over those and tend to agree with your selections also.  Need to place an order.

Mark, Your suggestions are very helpful, and right along the lines I was thinking about also. 

At lunch I had a few minutes.  I hit the red tree with a bit of a brown wash sprayed lightly.  The cell phone pic does not show it too well.  I found I was blowing a lot of the 'leaves' off though, maybe too much air on a too thin wash.  So the yellow tree I hit with a spray can of flat camo brown.  Held the tree at arms lenght from the can and just misted some color on.  Any improvement?



The original:



Thanks so much!

Mike

PS, looking at these, I don't think that red tree is nearly as bright in person, but maybe it is . . .

[mark dance]

Yes, I do see a subtle improvement.  You may wish to "hit" the green trees with the brown paint at the same time?

md

[Scottl]

Green and red are complementary colors, so if you want to desaturate/tone down red, spraying with green will do it.