How to make a tree, or bush, actually it could even be a flowering plant of any kind...

All of you have seen my dioramas, and in the past I have posted different stages of the diorama. Recently I have not had any landscaping to do so I have been concentrating on making trees, bushes, and plants. I read a lot on the model railroad and dollhouse forums on the "HOW TO" pages. From there I adapt it to make different plants such as the protea that I showed in the post on the new photos, that is from an online tutorial on how to make a marigold flower and I used that base and added the bract to make the protea.

I have to thank a lot of people, many of whom have helped without even knowing, others have given me so much advice and tutorials I can't thank them enough. It goes without saying how much help Ana and Danny have been, Ana with her sculptures and Danny with his knowledge and his trees, both the ones he has in stock and the ones he and I custom made together for my dioramas. I also have to thank Pim, she is the sculptor who does the lilies and lotus I have on the Indian dio as well as the bird of paradise in Africa. The most help have come from several other model makers, a railroader from the east coast named Micheal who does my custom palm fronds and one of the best dollhouse tree makers also on the east coast named Marilyn, she has put me in contact with all of the places where they sell different sizes of foliage to make most of the trees and plants I make now.

Well, here is my tutorial for all those who want to make a diorama or just add some trees or bushes to their display cases. The first step is to decide how big of a tree you want to make. Remember when cutting the wire that the foliage is going to add to the height so if you have a space that is 12 inches (30cm) you need to make sure you make the branches at least 2 inches (5 cm) shorter. I use 22 guage florist wire for the frame, I cut 30 pieces a little longer then the height of the tallest branches. As you twist the wires you lose some length so add a little to compensate. Then just twist the wires into the basic form of the tree, I usually have a line drawing I make first then use this just as a rough guide for the shape.


Next I add the clay. There are lots of different types of clay, I use 2, polymer and paper clay. Polymer clay is heavier and needs to be baked to harden, paper clay is really light and air dries. For the trunk and thick branches you need the polymer clay (there are lots of different brands and I use Sculpy and Fimo, but any major brand should work the same) and the paper clay for touch ups and very thin pieces where the weight of the clay is important or you can't bake it again to harden the polymer clay.


Now I bake the clay, Sculpy and Fimo both take 12 minutes per 1/4 inch thickness at 275 degrees, if you use a different brand just follow the directions. When that is done, paint the trunk with the first coat. I try to make 10 or 12 trunks at a time so I can do all of the different steps together and save time.


You have to decide how you are going to stand the tree up at this point. There are lots of ways, I use 3 different approaches, the first is to make the tree balanced enough to stand on it's own, the next way is to put a peg or a piece of wire out the bottom so you can make a hole in the diorama base and stand it up so it can easily be moved around, and finally you can make a free standing base for it to attach to. The first two are easy, the third is fun. To make a base I start making rocks or pebbles, then I make the actual base that the tree will be attached to, then put the rocks and other pieces together in a pattern that looks natural. The other option is to make a simple round or square base and attach the tree to it.
Small rocks


The tree attached to the base, I didn't take a photo of the painted one attached to the base before I painted it so this photo shows an unpainted tree. It can be done this way but it is easier to paint the tree and base separately but if you attach them before you paint just be careful at the base not to smear the paint.


And finally it all comes together.


At this point you just need to add the foliage and any flowers or touch ups you want. I sometimes add vines or smaller plants at the base, whatever you want to make it look like your vision. Here are 3 small flowering bushes I made for India, they are from kits I bought to learn how to make my own and use the process above. One is a small coral tree which flowers with no leaves, the other two are just tropical bushes I saw in photos of the Indian forests while researching the diorama but I am not really sure what I want species they are but I liked the look for the forested area.


Hope this is helpful

WOW ! It looks so easy when you do it, - but I don`t even dare to try

Thank you, Phil, for this great series of photoes, it is very, very kind of you

SUSANNE wrote:

WOW ! It looks so easy when you do it, - but I don`t even dare to try

Thank you, Phil, for this great series of photoes, it is very, very kind of you

I'm glad you like the post, but it really as easy as it looks, there is not secret or magic involved, just your imagination. The only thing that is difficult is adding the foliage to look like a real plant and not just clumped together in a random fashion. If you look at a real tree, at first it looks like all of the branches and leaves look like they are just randomly growing up from the trunk. Take a minute and really look and you see that the branches, especially the bigger base branches, are spread out and don't overlap to allow the most access to the light of the sun. Also the leaves are clumped to the outside and the inner branches have very little growing leaves. Again, the smaller branches are offset to allow the most sunlight to hit them and this makes modeling a tree a bit easier than it looks at first. For the same reason (access to sunlight) the lower branches have a lot less foliage then the upper and canopy of the tree.

Knowing this makes it easier to avoid a giant ball of foliage after you spent all of that time modeling the branches. If you look at the photo below I have visual access to all of the lower branches so you can see the work I put into the trunk while the upper branches do not have as much detail because they are hidden in the foliage.

Thank you! I´ve always wanted to know how you do those wonderful trees :)

Thanks for this step by step Phil, it's fantastic, I really want to try it out

Thank you, Thank you very much for these posts. It is great that the "TREEMASTER" has shared his wisdom with us. You methods and techinques are wonderful. They should be very helpful to anyone wanting to make dioramas in the future. :)

Thanks so much for this tutorial. When I have time, I will try it and see what I can do.

thank you so much for this great lesson phil