I am going to be needing some palms for my layout, and none of the ones you can buy seemed to look right to me, so.......the wheels started turning and ideas started coming. My wife suggested the twigs dropping off the pine trees in the yard as the trunks. I had plenty of poly fiber from making the 'tuffs' in Franklin Canyon. While working my regular local job in Guntersville, chicken trucks are constantly going by and in one area there are alot of feathers.....hummmm.....kinda look like palm leaves. Finally, in the last wind storm a kind of fungus came off some of the trees in the yard and Kimberly brought one in and asked if I could use it. The quest was on, and now the question is, 'pretty close or not at all?' Be honest and all ideas welcome!
Next, took different feathers, dip end in glue, stick in poly fiber. Next I took dark green and sprayed the feathers. It looked too dark so I went over it after it dried with gloss ivy leaf. (Both spray cans from walmart.)
I am not sure where my friend got them, but his palm trees use cut and dyed feathers for the palm frawns. They look amazing! I will try to get a phot for you.
Here's the tree fungus Kimberly brought in. It sort of looks like the dead leafs on a palm when cut to smaller sizes.
I took the smaller cut pieces, again dipped in glue and placed under the feathers all around the top.
And thats it..... Thoughts please. Color? Texture? Anything! LOL It takes about 30 minutes to do one tree. Fire away.....
Wow, yeah! I figured they would take some time to build one by one, but the results are worth it. The green color under the camera lighting is dead on. I like the correct shine on the fronds, too. I think you outdid the very nice JTT palms.
Tell her wrong kinda palm. Those look more like date palms..But I do like them! And I agree, the color looks good! BTW, Hart of the South, hartofthesouth, makes great palm kits. They also sell the fronds as well.. Something else to think about. Here's an article about the kits.. TrainLife - March 2006 - Page 6
They look pretty dang good. What locale are you doing? There are several varieties of palms, you want to model the right ones. These look more like Canary Island Date Palms. the leaves look a little too light green, you want a more medium green. The trunks have a distinct texture pattern to them. Also, for all palms, older palm trees tend to have greyish trunks rather than brown ones. Browner trunks indicate younger palms. Here in Los Angeles, it's pretty hard to avoid seeing a palm tree no matter which direction you go. But there are several varieties of 'em.
dont the trunks have a plated armor type appearance? But those do look like a great start. Are you going to model a depot that had them or...?
I'm not to familiar with palm trees, but from what I can tell, those are 100 times better than any I have seen for sale commercially. Those feathers give just the right texture. It is nice to see a palm tree that doesn't look like plastic!
And that, my friends, is what a MODELER does - takes what is available and makes a masterpiece! Well, done, Jerry!
