Autumn/Winter Trees with Citadel Woods Canopies

These 20 trees (bent wire with tape over it,  mounted on a weighted plastic mound) were drugstore Halloween tchotchkes from quite few years ago that I had lying around. I think they were a dollar and a quarter each. I like the Citadel Woods - bought two kits, but I hate the rigid little canopies they include for the foliage. These trees look great from the top but from any other angle they look very unnatural. I hate leaving the canopy pieces (CWC) in the box, so midway through this tree basing project  it struck me to incorporate them in as piles of fallen leaves.

Here's the first step in my process - hot glue the trees to old DVD-Rs, then kill the glass smooth surface with white modeling paste. I wish I had thought to use the CWCs earlier, but it didn't occur to me until these had been sitting around for a few days as seen above.  The principal problem I ad with this project stems (har har) from trying to disguise the unnatural mounds from which the trees are sprouting. The other thing is that these CWCs are not perfectly flat but rounded in a convex curve. Being quite rigid I didn't feel comfy flattening them as it may distort the leave pattern and more honestly, I couldn't be bothered to look up how to heat them in a way safe enough to not destroy them.

Step 2 - glue down the railroad ballast - sand works perfectly fine here too. I use what I have on hand.

The trees were purchsed jet black which works to my method perfectly. Here I've sprayed the entire thing with Rustoleum Camouflage dark brown. I jumped the gun and did it before the glue dried I think as you can still see the white paste peeking through. Not to worry - it all gets covered.

I did what would be zenithal lighting with Rustoleum light brown covering just the tops of the trees, knowing the color's spillover effects would be fine. Then on the ground I did my usual mix of Graveyard Earth (from a quart I had mixed up at Home Depot), followed by the middle blend of Graveyard Earth and Khaki. I didn't do the final highlight here as I thought it should be darker under the leaf piles. I changed my mind on that later.

Time to paint he the CWC leaf piles - the biggest in the most common brown colors, followed by orange, then russet, finally with the smallest being the rarest: yellow. I could have mixed them all up but didn't want to spend a ton of time picking out individual leaves on all of these fiddly pieces. This was almost entirely a dry brush job over Rustoleoum Camouflage dark brown again - a most useful product.

Maybe you want to see more of what was on my table at the time? When I say I am crunched for space - I mean it. Yes even ancient Ral Partha paints get used once in while.

Back to out problem - these CWCs don't all fit between the tree bases making some jut skyward to an unacceptable degree. I also could have cut some of the longer pieces down following some arbitrary line along the leaves, but by this point they were painted. I also could have left off the ones that didn't fit, but then I'd have bizarre odds and ends with no good purpose lying around. they were all going to get on there somehow.

Another late discovery: because of their convex shape, the holes were going to be near the tops of the piles. That won't do and I wish I had thought of this sooner. It wasn't until I started trying to place them that I noticed those holes looked odd. Plus I didn't want little insects or spiders making homes in there (an unlikely occurrence =)). Little masking tape on the back, black paint on the top ...

... followed by gluing some commercially available "leaf litter" over the openings. Paint the what are now roots or fallen branches and Done.

A final drybrush of khaki on it's own ...

... and time to just start gluing it all down. I used plain ol Elmer's white on all of this. Clump bushes from Woodland Scenics were used around the edges of the parts not touching the ground. Followed by my usual green grass mix - no tufts here. Glue is still wet in this shot so it looks like an inviting Spring setting. It dries a lot darker of course. I do these in phases: first the bushes to cover the gaps, second the grass to cover irregularities of the ground cover , and third I did more leaf litter to cover whatever errors remained obvious.

And La! twenty trees on five bases for an Autumn setting. They'll join the other dead trees I have completed - see here. One thing about haunted wood is that they are not primarily composed of bare wood - it's the darkness of the thick foliage and shadowy canopy that contributes to the foreboding atmosphere. If the moon is shining down one can see quite clearly.

In any event, the figures for these accessories will be visible. Some West Wind zombies seen here and below:

I have a few more sprues of leaves left but am out of cheapo trees. I'll probably add them to other Autumn bases - with more advanced planning next time!

Thanks all for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged ...