A FOREST CORNER

One of the first open terrain areas encountered on my railroad as it climbs out of Oakridge is beyond the Salmon Creek bridge and behind the Pope and Talbot saw mill location.  This is a back corner in the layout space and often overlooked.  This was one of my early ground cover experiment areas.  With ground cover in place, this made for a great place to add the forest.

 

Before I added three-dimensional trees, I needed to augment the trees on the backdrop.  The backdrop had only a little bit of terrain or trees showing above the three-dimensional terrain.  Experience with my initial forest installation at Cruzatte guided my efforts in this back corner.  I needed to add a semblance of trees above the terrain.  The scene needed dark forest represented above the terrain.  

 

Hillside in the “back corner” behind Pope and Talbot and the initial climb out of Oakridge.  Note there is no forest represented on the backdrop nor any other terrain above the peak of the three-dimensional hillside.

 

I pulled out my acrylic paints and brushes to add forest above the three-dimensional hill.  The trees of the forest did not need to be fancy as quite a few three-dimensional trees would be installed in front of the backdrop.  Still, I chose to represent typical Douglas Fir shapes, albeit in simple block form.  This was a good chance to experiment with tree painting, knowing most of the effort will be covered by the three-dimensional trees.  I will call this a work in process…..

 

Initial backdrop tree effort.  I subsequently added more tree shapes between the primary set seen here.  I also experimented with a bit of streaking within these backdrop trees.  I need to develop my backdrop tree techniques further, but these will be fine for this forest.

 

With the backdrop addressed, I began the three-dimensional forest by installing a row of half-trees against the backdrop.  This image also shows the additional backdrop trees filling in gaps between the primary trees.

 

Forest development with the back row of half trees and a row of full trees in front of that back row.  One can already see the painted backdrop trees simply extending the forest without calling attention to painted detail.

 

Bringing the forest down to the track, one can see how this scene will develop.

 

I ran out of tree-making supplies, so I could just provide a major hint as to how this scene will develop.  Getting this far motivates me to pursue materials to add to the scene!