Hands down the scariest thing I ever attempted (Patreon)

Mah friens, I've never been more nervous than today morning when I was looking at that pile of dried up wood on my workbench in the last photo and thinking "how in the world am I gonna make a tree out of this". It was a weird feeling, because obviously every ingredient was there, just the vision and some sort of plan were sort of lacking. 

But hey, if you click through this gallery from the last photo to the first, you'll see the transformation. Although the tree didn't look like much at first, I think it's shaping up pretty well! I'm really looking forward to that stage when all the wooden parts will be in place, if you look at the current photos it's just sea foam on the remaining branches, but then... then I'm concerned to say the least! 

Because the foliage from AK that I have, well, it looks incredible in the box, right? But when I unpacked it and looked at it closer, it's basically some kind of twine sprinkled with leaves. I've seen some finished foliage using this stuff and the results are excellent, but I must figure out how to work with it properly. Let's just hope it won't ruin the entire tree and if it does... from that point onward I'll be doing just autumn and winter sceneries! 

But to give you at least some backstory to this anime, the main "frame" of the tree is made from dried up plant roots superglued together. It was a regular green plant, a large one obviously, and its roots have very nice shape, texture and size. After that I coated the whole thing in a thick layer of diluted Tamiya putty mixed with VMS filler powder and when it started to dry I scoured the surface with a hobby blade and a razor saw. After that I "filled" some sections with epoxy putty because some branches didn't blend in nicely with the trunk. I also made the bottom part thicker, this is where I'll sculpt roots once the tree is glued to the base. After that, it was endless fun with gluing pieces of sea foam to the tree. It's also a slow process and I only managed to do two branches so far, but it's really fun because it transforms the whole thing into something that might resemble an actual tree. Superglue activator is very helpful here because wood soaks up the CA and it's next to impossible to hold anything together. After these were held in place I soaked the sea foam twigs with thin superglue in order to make them stiffer and coated them again with thick putty and repeated the whole scouring process. 

The only thing I regret is covering some of the small "seeds" with CA and now they look like ugly lumps, but I'll pay more attention to that on the remaining branches. But damn, I'm excited and scared at the same time! Of course, I'm going to paint the tree before adding any leaves, so it's truly gonna be an all or nothing moment. AK Foliage, please don't let me down!!! 

Also, I'm very sorry for the lack of updates over this week, there was some family stuff, a big birthday celebration, some family visits, I started some mild physical rehab in a pool (which felt really awesome), but now I'm going to be more active again!