Here it is!
Believe it or not, this is a piece of balsa, carved down, stained, then covered with sagebrush bark. The two limbs left on this piece of deadwood are sagebrush twigs. It is not just a piece of broken limb I found laying in the yard. The moss is the same foam as I used above. It was made, using the techneques listed below.
If at first you do not succeed, don't worry about it. Practice makes perfect! Or imperfect!
Barking the tree or the fallen trunk. As I am very short on materials for this, I am going to do a short piece of 3/4" balsa. About a 3" piece. Representing of course, the remains of a fallen tree.
Carve it to a semblance of a round trunk. Because we are doing the bark detail, you do not have to carve and cut on the trunk itself. Leave this step out. If you want some broken branches on it, go ahead and poke the holes for this.
Then using your specialty tool, (jewellers screwdriver) Just tear up the ends. Hollow it out, mess with it. However, don't worry about perfection. I hate to keep mentioning this, but you can overdo or underdo the very effect you are looking for.
Once you are happy with your results, drop it into your A/I mixture. I use a mix of one ounce of Alcohol, (don't use your favorite single malt here), with six drops of Black India Ink mixed in. Different colors of India Ink can be had at your local art supply store, or, if you don't have one of those, online. I use two colors, sienna and black. Set the piece to the side and let it dry thouroughly.
Now you are ready to start barking the the tree, stump, fallen trunk...etc.
I will normally use yellow carpenters glue for this. It is stickier than white glue and sets faster. I recommend using some sort of rubber/vinyl gloves. You will be getting glue on your fingers! There is no neat way of doing this step. But I seem to be out of yellow glue, so I am going to use C/A. Not the best choice, but it will work! It has a tendency to leave shiny spots. These can be covered later with a flat matte spray. Here we go: Do not use any more glue than is necessary.
Well crud...Sorry, just got called in to work. Just a couple hours though. I will post more on this today.
Dave
