Rewanui - a 1940 West Coast NZ layout in 1:64

[Barney]

Superb  scenery - and greenery 
Barney

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

It's been a while...

I've been working on means to represent the various characteristic plants need to give the layout the feel I'm after.  As so often happens, a little progress just leads to more work as new skills are learnt.

At this point I have more or less finished a swath of forest.  There may be a few tweaks, but the next step is to replicate it across the layout.

Lawrence

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

And a slightly different angle - I particularly like the Kiekie plant (looks like a tussock) growing up the dead tree.

[finescalerr]

Almost no giveaway at all that we're looking at a model. -- Russ

[Krusty]

Ooooh! How did you do the Kiekie?

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

The Kiekie is an etch.  Dead easy to do.  Not visible in the pic, but I modelled the stems climbing the tree with plumber's hemp.

Funny where you bump into people :-)

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

Here's the dead tree in full view.

Kiekie is a climbing plant that uses other trees etc for support.  Modelled using an etch, with the stems from plumber's hemp.  The dead tree is a root collected on a ramble at some point.  Possibly the easiest tree that I've made, but full of character and a favourite.

The etched plant is done as a comb.  This is pre-painted, leaves curved and then the plant is rolled up.  Pretty simple to do, and the same technique I've used to model a number of similarly structured plants (Toetoe, cabbage tree, Phormium flax).  The etches just differ in leaf dimensions.

I have tried to model the whole vertical diversity of the bush from floor to canopy.  Much nice stuff is hidden away out of view (wasted effort?), but enough grins through from place to place to give the desired effect.

[Ray Dunakin]

Excellent work, and very attractive! I love that close up view of the dead tree -- really shows off all of the varied undergrowth, mosses, etc.

[Hydrostat]

Your forest looks very good. I especially like the trees stretching their branches to the light, away from the shady slope. The Kiekie indeed looks very good, very vegetational.

Cheers
Volker

[Les Tindall]

Brilliant, extremely realistic.
Les

[Design-HSB]

Congratulations, for me this is one of the best designed landscapes.

[Sami]

The many details of the vegetation are excellent.

[Barney]

Mind blowing stuff !!! with excellense
Barney

[WP Rayner]

WOW!  I have absolutely no first-hand experience with that environment, but your modelling is so expressive and well done, it is totally believable.

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

The foliage is gradually spreading to cover the baseboards.

The creek has also been watered since my last post.

This view is more or less complete other than some weedy plants in the foreground and some work to make the grass less uniform. The telegraph poles need some bedding in and a bit more dirt and coal spillage adding around the track.

I've found that chopped silk fibres make excellent twigs to bridge the gap between printed branches and flock leaves.  I chop dyed silk to around 2mm length and push it onto the tree after applying high hold hairspray.  Shaking the tree dislodges almost all the excess.  The remainder can be blown off with compressed air, which also aligns the fibres vertically.  Another coating of hairspray and the flock can be applied which creates a very delicate effect.  Silk is a smooth fibre so this works well.