Someday...

...I'll take the time to learn how to make realistic trees. I've been meaning to do it since forever. I figure, if someone else can model them really well, why can't I? After all, they're just twisted wire...



The first time I saw the work of this artist, I gasped. All of his trees are stunning, but some of them are utterly mind-blowing in their intricacy, detail and realism. You may want to peruse his gallery (it's in French, incidentally, and there's more here); he even shows you how he makes them. He uses only a few ingredients, listed here in order if significance:

• keen observation
• patience
• wire
• paints and glues
• fibers and flocking materials

He demonstrates what this combination—plus some formidable talent—can produce. It would seem tree dioramas constitute his primary modeling interest; it would, after all, be impractical to do a large layout featuring a substantial number of trees executed to this degree. I'd be pleased to be able to make just a few for myself, much as he's done.

And can you imagine what they'd be worth? Since most people have a hard time judging the value of talent such as this, I'd say the number in your head is probably too low. Given the investment of time, I could easily imagine any one of these trees fetching many hundreds of dollars, possibly more. If I had bottomless pockets, I'd easily part with my green in trade for his green.

That not being the case, I'll just have to hunker down and learn. And since I model in the smaller scales, I may have less work to do in order to populate my layouts. As I said at the outset: someday...