- making gloomy old trees the hybrid way

This article I will show my attempt to make scale trees by combining two methods of making miniature trees. The tree I am making is supposed to be a representation of the kind of ancient an ominous trees that grew in Mirkwood, the great dark forest covering much of the Rhovanion. It is most know through 'The Hobbit' as the place through which Thorin Oakenshield and company journeyed through and got lost in on their way to the Lonely Mountain. The trees are very graphically described as being dark and gnarled and terrible things lurked under their eternal shadows,

Say hello to Beorn, he has just cut down a tree for me! This stick, which is really all it is will make up the bole of the tree. You'll find a dried up old stick like this pretty much everywhere. Make sure it is of a reasonable scale girth and that it is dry and dead but not rotten. "Reasonable scale" is something you'll have to develop an eye but when you walk in the woods looking for a stick like this it helps if you have a miniature in your pocket for scale comparison. Pick something that is nice and gnarly and has other interesting colors and features.

To the left you see the stick trimmed at both ends with a saw. Try to find a piece of the stick which tapers slightly upwards. Also make sure you get some interesting features included in the section you are cutting of. Look especially for knots, cracks and texture. Try to not to include areas which have been recently chipped and are showing wood which isn't weathered. No matter how experienced you are it is difficult and time consuming to reproduce the natural tinting and cracking Mother Nature does.

Decide how tall you want the tree to be. This is should be a function of the diameter of the tree, what kind of tree it is supposed to be and which scale. Again a miniature will come in handy. Putting it next to the trunk will instinctively tell you  what makes most sense. My inspiration is an gnarled old oak so I want my tree to be more broad than tall, hoping this will make it look ancient.

Below you can see the material used for the upper branches. Any old wire will probably do but  I use florist wire, the kind used to get in craft stores. I make a core out of a brass Ø 2 mm wire, 300 mm long and bundle the aluminum Ø 1 mm 30mm long wire strands around it. Save one strand of florist wire....

...to use to keep the other wires in place around the core. Make the core wire stick out about 40 mm. It will be used to anchor the wire branch into the trunk.

To the right you can see how how one wire has beentwisted around the others. This also helps to give the branch a bit more volume. Although we are not going for hyper-realism here it is useful to know that the collective diameter of

 outer branches doesn't exceed the diameter of the inner branches. The same is true for the main branches, their total diameter doesn't exceed the diameter of the main trunk. Take a measuring tape to the park next time if you don't believe me.

Split the main bundles in thinner bundles of 5-7 wires and use one strand to keep the wires together. Make another split with 2-3 wires in each branch. Twist these wires around each other to about halfway between the split and the end. When you have done this for all branches the result will look something like the above.