Making Realistic yet Durable trees for Wargaming

Dear all, I recently posted about this on the store FB group page but thought it was worth recording here too, especially for those who may not use FB.

I greatly enjoy watching how to diorama videos, from folks like Laser Creations and Lukes APS (Now Geek Gaming Services)... and we've just got in the starting shipment of the GGS scenics range :)

Luke did a great video on making trees , that were to be used on a demo / participation Bolt Action game board.

He started off with Woodland Scenics Tree armatures like these which I used...

Which are flat out of the bag like this... please forgive picture of my knee but it gives you an idea of scale!

The plastic is bendable and you twist the branches into the desired shape, like these I made;

Then to add foliage, first attached Seafoam pieces using a contact adhesive.

I used ADOS brand here in NZ.

Use a coffee stirrer / lolly / ice-bloc stick and spread the adhesive on the armatures and add the seafoam pieces to it using some tweezers.

Once done they should look like this:

Once these are dry, its now time to give the pieces some strength and protection. This is done by dunking or dipping the tree in Liquid Latex:

We have the woodland scenics product available in store:

The latex will drip off the trees, and can causing some webbing between the branches which should be blown away to disperse them, I used an airbrush.

Once dry spray them brown. I used a matt brown aerosol spray, and you should end up with something like these:

Another view:

At this point once the brown paint has dried, spray them with an aerosol varnish and then sprinkle on fine sponge flock material of desired colour... I used Scenic Textures Dark Green. Available in 400cc , 750cc and a gallon sizes.

Repeat this process, spray again to seal, and sprinkle on more material until desired effect achieved. Giving a final spray to seal it. I also added a final light sprinkle of a lighter colour to add a top highlight to the foliage.

Once that was done I based them... I 3d printed some 80mm bases, but you could use GW bases or cut out some discs of MDF with a hole saw... Once based, I then painted the bases with PVA glue and sprinkled on Forest Undergrowth from Scenic Textures again.

And the final result was trees like this, which look great to my mind and will be durable to handle too, the liquid latex and layers of flock adding strength to the finished trees :)

I've included some Lord of the Rings figures for scale:

Along with an Elven Sentinel...

...and a bunch of them all done together, along with some background trees, lichen clumps and some Riders of Rohan galloping by!

So why not add some life to your wargames tables and make some great looking trees like these :)

Cheers

Scott