Ever evolvin dio. ft. 'THE INDESTRUCTIBLE TREE' as ft. on youtube.

[Badder]

1 hour ago, PlaStix said:

Just been catching up - more wonderful progress. 

Kind regards,

Stix

Cheers Stix,

And thanks for all the likes.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[Badder]

 

I've added a balsa wood partition wall to the ground floor. Nothing fussy. I just glued it to the side of the kit's partition wall which extends only half way back towards the rear.  It's there simply to block out the light coming in through the 'wicket' door at the front of the building, making the room on the right very dark. Meanwhile, light from a side window enters the room above and is visible through the shuttered rear window. This is as it should be.

 

 

Some more tidying up the lower rear wall, re-carving the stonework, especially around the windows.  

 

For some reason I decided to leave one 'pillar' of bricks in situ, where they originally formed the left hand side of the doorway. Maybe the reason will come to me at some point.

 

 

I have an idea to 'whitewash' this lower section of wall. To my mind it will look interesting...brightening up the building massively. But possibly there is a practical reason. As the rear of the building backs onto a farmyard, I'm thinking that the white wall will reflect the light from a lantern and greatly improve the lighting of the yard at night, should the 'farmer' need to venture out to tend to his animals.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[Rob 1]

I've just had a bit of a catch up on this too, I do like the nice atmospheric old building being worked on, looks very well finished and convincing.

[Badder]

38 minutes ago, Rob 1 said:

I've just had a bit of a catch up on this too, I do like the nice atmospheric old building being worked on, looks very well finished and convincing.

Thanks Rob,

Much appreciated.

Once the lower wall is finished I can fix the porch in place and think about cracking on with the ivy. I have in mind covering large areas with it. It's going to be a long job!

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[Badder]

The lower section of wall has been carved to a satisfactory level. The few scruffy bits will be covered over with moss/ivy. Rather than skim plaster over the gap between upper and lower sections of the wall I instead filled it with putty and inserted a long 'beam' of wood. (real wood) along it. I could have placed the exposed ends of floor beams regularly along this line, demarcating the floor/ceiling height, but went for the lazy option.

 

Although I said I was going to whitewash this section, I plumped for painting it black, just to see what it looked like. It looks okay actually, but I think I will stick with the plan and whitewash it. I'm going to paint the brickwork red first, then apply the chipping fluid, then paint the walls white and the window surrounds blue before attacking it all with a wet brush.

 

 

I won't be finishing off the cornerstones at the left hand corner of this wall as I have other plans. I will have to tidy up the right hand corner of the building though.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[kpnuts]

It's all looking amazing.

[bhouse]

On 2017-5-29 at 8:57 PM, Badder said:

I have an idea to 'whitewash' this lower section of wall. To my mind it will look interesting...brightening up the building massively. But possibly there is a practical reason. As the rear of the building backs onto a farmyard, I'm thinking that the white wall will reflect the light from a lantern and greatly improve the lighting of the yard at night, should the 'farmer' need to venture out to tend to his animals.

That is a very good idea. French (and probably other) farmers used limewash on the inside walls of barns as it has antiseptic properties.

It's a difficult finish to mimic though, as the calcite crystals in cured limewash have two different refractive indices giving a limewashed surface a curious 'glow'.

[bhouse]

Just to add how impressed I am with the degree of realism that you have created.

However (and please don't take this as a criticism), while the roof has been superbly made and painted it looks suspiciously flat to me. Barns of a certain age tend to have quite distorted roofs as the supporting timbers move over time. 

Here's what our old porcherie roof looks like:

 

"Trés cahoteuse" as the French say!

[Badder]

9 hours ago, kpnuts said:

It's all looking amazing.

Thanks KP,

Much appreciated. I might bung a Triffid in the vegetable plot! 

 

Rearguards

Badder

[Badder]

Hi Brian, and thanks for the positive comments, and yes you are correct.

The roof is much too tidy: the kit part of the roof especially so. The plaster cast roof at the rear is a bit better, but still too neat for my liking.

The problem is/was that I didn't want to spend weeks trying to make a saggy old roof completely from scratch. And I couldn't just bend the mould to create a sagging rear section because the tiles themselves would each bend and this wouldn't be at all realistic.

So I went for an old building which has had a new roof in recent years. I was and am still thinking of placing a bloke on the roof retiling it - now that his farm has been liberated he can look to a better future. There is a post at the start of this section ('Ardennes Building') that refers to this, if my memory serves me correctly!

 

But I will be making a ruined saggy old building in the future.

 

For now, I am going to give the whitewash a go. It may work, it may not, but again, a fair bit will be covered in ivy....

 

Thanks for the photos and the polite (and justified) criticism!

 

Rearguards

Badder

Edited May 31, 2017 by Badder

[Badder]

Here the wall has been given a coat of heavy chipping fluid and a spray of Tamiya acrylic white. (Oh, but not until after I'd painted the brickwork brick red.)

 

 

 

 

And here's the wall after a good going over with a damp brush.

 

 

I removed more at the bottom than the top. Firstly, the whitewash nearer the ground would be subject not only to X-volume of rain, but also to the spray caused by raindrops hitting puddles at ground level. Secondly, the bottom of a wall is washed over by a greater volume of water cascading down it that the top is.  Thirdly, the bottom of a wall is more greatly affected by moss, lichen, algae and other biological agents than the top is. And fourthly, the top of a wall is sheltered more by an overhanging roof than the bottom is. So whitewash nearer the top tends to last longer.

 

I'm not entirely happy with the result at the moment, but there's a lot more work to do yet. Hopefully it will turn out looking believable.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

I took off more whitewash with a damp brush, then used a Humbrol 'dust wash', sparingly, and a dark brown/black homemade wash to further weather the wall.

 

Next to add moss/lichen with my Japanese Grit Paints, and some green pigments and washes. This will be concentrated along the lower half of the wall.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[Vince1159]

Beautyful job on the wall Badder,really looks the part ....

[bhouse]

Excellent work on the wall. If you need any photos of well-weathered stone/render/tiles etc for references let me know as I have plenty on my doorstep!

Brian

[Badder]

5 hours ago, Vince1159 said:

Beautyful job on the wall Badder,really looks the part ....

Thanks Vince.

I've got a few things looking 'the part'.... whether they all look good together is a different matter! The whitewashed wall is really HEAVILY weathered, while the rest of the building isn't. I'm hoping it won't look too exaggerated once there's ivy over everything.

4 hours ago, bhouse said:

Excellent work on the wall. If you need any photos of well-weathered stone/render/tiles etc for references let me know as I have plenty on my doorstep!

Brian

Thanks Brian,

I have a thing for ruined and old farm buildings. We have some real beauties around my way which I come across during my job, but I rarely have a camera. I don't carry a camera phone with me at work, just a basic phone/text phone. I've lost or damaged too many to risk another.

So yes, any really good ruined or overgrown farm type buildings would be much appreciated. Just post them to my inbox.

Cheers.

Badder.

[Badder]

Here's the wall with some green Japanese Grit Paint applied with an old stiff brush. Unfortunately I've use up a pot of my preferred green, and I had to use the next nearest shade. I have 4 pots of differing greens left. Once they are used up, that's it. Unless my sister in law in Japan can get hold of some more for me. The stuff isn't available outside of Japan.

 

Close ups of each window....

 

 

A bit more work to do here, some more washes, I think. Then I will apply the same grit paint to the other walls. Once that is done I can think about fixing the porch in place and starting on the ivy.....

 

TFL

Badder

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

I've continued with the application of washes to the moss covering the walls, using green pigment/thinner washes. . I am happy to call this part of the project finished as much of the moss on the walls will act as the 'undergrowth' for creepers and ivy. The fixing of ivy to the building will be a long and tedious process, the creation of the ivy itself being a project all of its own.

 

Here's some pics of where things stand at the moment.

 

 

Photo below: the porch is looking wonky here because it's sat on some grit.

 

Photo below: The right hand corner of the main building isn't finished here. I have plans for it.

 

 

Photo below: Again, I have plans for the left rear corner of the building so I have not finished it off.

 

 

 

I'm going to give everything a spray with matt varnish and then I'm going to set this aside and investigate various ways of making the ivy/creepers.

 

I will first look at my 'fishing line method', which I used for making trees in my diorama 'Carry on Regardless'. I'm thinking it can be adapted to create ivy/creepers. The big challenge though will be how to replicate the leaves themselves. I have some ideas which I will explore 'live' in this thread.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

Before I investigate my 'fishing line method', I first have to look at a more 'natural' material, that being plant roots.

Here's some roots I pulled up from a hedgerow a month or so ago.

 

I have a few bunches of this stuff, but not enough to cover all of the walls. If it proves a good material I will get some more. I've stored these bunches indoors, letting them dry out.

 

Last week I soaked them in a 50/50 water to PVA solution and hung them out on the washing line to dry in the sun. When the glue was just starting to turn sticky, I fanned out the root strands and pressed them down flat. Once properly dry, I again stored them indoors. 

The roots are now 'sealed' and hopefully preserved. They remain pliable and are not brittle. This 'fan' of roots is the largest I have and I plan to fix it to the wall shown in the photo above this post. I'm going to use paper leaves. They resemble those of ivy, though are a little too large to be truly accurate, but they are okay to represent the leaves of some kind of creeper. Again, I'm going to make the leaves using a 'snowflake' paper,punch purchased from Hobbycraft. One of the 'snowflakes' can be seen bottom right of the photo.

 

Again, I will be snipping the ends off each of the five 'arms' of the snowflake, to obtain '3-lobed' leaves. Now I will see if I can stick them to the roots.

 

TFL

Badder

 

 

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[Major_Error]

All i can say is "WOW!!"

 

Nice!

8-D

[Badder]

1 hour ago, Major_Error said:

All i can say is "WOW!!"

 

Nice!

8-D

Thanks Major,

 

A 'Wow!' is something I've not had before, so one with  double exclamation marks is even more special!

I'm glad you like it and hope you are enjoying the journey as much as I am. Now, to cut another batch of leaves.... sigh.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[Badder]

Okay.... so here are the roots with around 35 leaves attached. (Rivet Counters are welcome to provide an accurate count!)

 

I was thinking I'd attach each leaf separately rather than use a 'sprinkle' method. I wanted the leaves to hang and 'grow' realistically.

So each leaf was picked up using the dampened point of a toothpick, then transferred to a spot of medium CA which I'd previously applied to a part of the roots. This method isn't perfect. Despite care, CA does sometimes 'capillariate'  (why is there no adverb for 'capillary action' ?)  and glues the leaf to the toothpick.

I've tried using metal implements instead of toothpicks, but the problem still persists. Progress is therefore slow and tiresome.

 

I am wondering if I can speed things up by laying out a whole bunch of leaves out on a board, all laying in the same orientation, and then lowering the CA 'dampened' roots onto them. I think it's worth a try.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

Hmmmmm..... The idea of laying a bunch of leaves out first and dabbing CA-soaked roots in kind of works, but the amount of time spent orientating the leaves first negates any advantages over gluing the leaves individually.  Plus of course, the leaves aren't placed 'perfectly'.

 

So, scrap that idea.

 

I'm now thinking that it might be better to glue large numbers of leaves to each other before gluing them to the roots. If I can somehow build 'modules' of leaves in 3-D structures, even better. So that's my next experiment.

 

TFL

Badder

[Badder]

Silly me. Silly, silly, me. Of course I don't need to cut up leaves and stick them together in clumps. They are already in small clumps called 'snowflakes'. All I had to do was bend them in half then stick lots together, but nowhere near as many as I would have to do with individual leaves.

 

I've continued with the roots then, adding dozens of bent snowflakes with CA. I'm not sure if the roots are really necessary now. Perhaps they only need be visible towards the extremities and at the 'trunk'.

 

I'm going to paint this up to see how realistic it looks.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

So excited with the results of simply painting the leaves lime green, I couldn't wait for the paint to dry before taking photos. In truth though, the leaves will be painted gloss anyway, so apart from some washes to create some slight variation, this is what they'll look like.

 

TFL

Badder.

 

PS. I've only glued my fingers together 7 times.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

I guess it had to happen. One of the fine 'twigs' at the tip has snapped off, taking a few leaves with it. Not to worry, I'm pretty sure the bulk of the leaves will hold the rest of the roots together... AND... I'm going to replace the finer 'twigs' with copper wire and ensure their permanence!

I've carried on adding extra layers of leaves to those already fixed in place, and have moved over towards the centre of the plant, fixing leaves there.

 

I won't bother posting more pics of the plant until it's due a coat of varnish and some washes.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited February 1, 2018 by Badder