Just over a year ago I constructed a wire-framed tree as something of an experiment, inspired by, but by no means anywhere as good as the writings of Gordon Gravett.
Mooching around in the workshop at the weekend my eyes fell upon this tree in its resting place on a shelf. I was never quite happy with this, for it's size it didn't really have the bulk it should have and even adding in a couple of extra (not very well secured) branches didn't help. As it was collecting dust and showing some signs of decay I opted to strip off the foliage for potential reuse and cut my losses... except that as I stripped it back I started to wonder if with a little re-arrangement of the existing branches it might have enough bulk as a half-relief tree.
There was only one way to find out and having stripped back a lot of the old bark mix I was able to re-manipulate the branches to suit the half relief style. The two add-on branches had fallen off but were re-configured in new locations with much more secure attachment. New branches were also added in a similar fashion and everything secured with lashings of Araldite.
Feeling there still wasn't enough branch density I had a rummage in the scenics box and found some Hornby R8857 'Wire foliage branches'. The foliage was no great shakes and what there was of it was removed. I then unwound the bottom end of the branches and re-wound them around the branches, again securing with Araldite. These branches are the yucky brown ones in the image above. I also opted to add more fine wire branches to the existing branches to again improve the density.
The result feels a lot more satisfactory than the original arrangement, the next job will be to re-finish the trunk and work back up all the branches, I am intending to use DAS Stone for this, prior to a new mix of bark paint going on.
Colin
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