Root Trees

This weekend I was at my local shop and while talking terrain with the owner, he was showing me some things online he was considering doing/getting for the store terrain. One of the pieces that really struck me was an ash waste tree. What made the tree unique was that it was made using the root of a plant! I thought it was absolutely genius and decided I had to give it a try.

Later that night I went out into my backyard with a flashlight and found a suitable sized root that happened to be from a weed. I couldn't help but be amazed at my luck as my backyard as well as the front is covered in these weeds! I cut the root from the plant and got to work!

For the base of the template I used a piece of MDF shaped with a Rasp and an electric hand sander to smooth it all out. The rocks are just that, properly shaped and sized rocks glued into place. The root was placed in the midst of the rocks and some sand was added to help add some additional detailing.



I used White Glue to secure everything, but I believe for the next one I'll end up using some hot glue to get everything in place and hide that with some white glue and sand. White glue just took far too long to secure everything and wasn't very good about me working it at all while things were still drying. I'd highly suggest the hot glue gun for the big pieces.

The sand was given an additional wash of 50/50 water/white glue to help secure everything further, and save my brushes later on when I went to paint it all!

For paint, I primed it all black, and gave it a simple drybrush of a dark grey color. I used some random house paint I had on hand but you could easily use Codex Grey. After this was a lighter drybrush of a light grey. Again, this was some random house paint I had, Fortress Grey would be a good choice of color.



All in all it was an extremely fast project, with the longest part of it all waiting for the white glue to dry completely! For something that normally is a nuscience in my lawn to become something useful like this is a real treat. Now, to make about 5 more of these bad boys!