1:22 scale ginkgo biloba a tree

Hello everyone! Many of you know that I have been dealing with a very serious illness and my contributions here have been very limited, not only here but my sculpting has been put on hold during this period as well. One thing I have been working on for quite a while is a ginkgo tree. I finally finished it and took some photos.

The tree stands over a foot tall (more then 30 cm) and has 1400 laser cut leaves, each one glued to th branches individually! YES, I said INDIVIDUALLY! Many evenings I would sit at my work space and take 50-100 leaves and glue them on, then a few days later do it again until I finished.

Now for the pictures, here it is with Anna's takin.
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Philip, I am so sorry to hear that you have been ill !!!!
Hopefully you are almost fully recovered and can enjoy your critters and fantastic models and dioramas again ?

Your ginkgo tree is absolutely beyond words
WOW!!! It is so beautyful, - and what a huge project !!!!!

Thankyou very much for sharing, it is a joy to look at

A phantastic tree, and all the small leaves- wonderful Phil (o)): (o)): (o)): (o)): (o)): (o)): (o)): (o)): (o)):

I'm sorry to hear that you have been ill lately, but I am glad you have posted again.
As far as the tree goes, it is as Susane said, beyond words! And it looks marvelous with the takin. Great work!

very nice Phil!

Phil, it is great that you're posting back your wonderful masterpieces! Those are huge exercises of patience and talent!
I am also sorry hearing from your hilness and I hope you're feeling better now!

Wow, what a beautiful tree and all those tiny leaves, with the perfect shape of ginko leaves Phenomenal work, and really incredible patience to glue them to branches Congratulations Phil!
I hope so much you feel better now or will feeling better very soon!

Wow, I love that tree so realistic and with that leaves Great work

Great job Phil, the model looks great, I like the leaves. The only thing I'd suggest is maybe making the upper branches a bit slimmer. I've noticed branches tend to go from thick to thin as they grow out if that makes sense.
If you have a dremel tool you can grind down the hardened clay to get really delicate thin parts as it is not always easy to sculpt such thin areas when the clay is uncured.

What a lovely sculpt - and an impressive show of dedication! The look of it actually makes me feel happy for that lucky takin stood in its shade - and someone having taken the time and effort to create that tree makes me happy such people exist. It's still not a thought I, for one, am used to.

How do the laser-cut leaves come about, though? (I've only seen it done in Portal 2, and don't expect their rendering of the process to have been wildly true-to-life.) Do you enjoy access to an industrial laser-cutting machine, or are there hobby-grade applications around? Do you design the leaves yourself, then order them from a third party in a selected number and hue? I'm just curious, that's all. They look ever so nifty, you see!

Dear Phil, it is good to read you again, even if you are talking of very bad things. I hope you feel better now.
Watching your trees is always a great pleasure and your patience is fantastic !

Thanks everyone for your compliments on my tree and your well wishes on my health, unfortunately my health is a chronic condition that will take a very long time and the treatment is very intense and uncomfortable to recover from so my work and contributions will be greatly diminished for some time to come.

elephas_maximus wrote:

Great job Phil, the model looks great, I like the leaves. The only thing I'd suggest is maybe making the upper branches a bit slimmer. If you have a dremel tool you can grind down the hardened clay to get really delicate thin parts as it is not always easy to sculpt such thin areas when the clay is uncured.

I know exactly what you mean Andrew, this trunk was not going to be a ginkgo tree when I made it and the branches were never meant to be exposed as much as they are. I have a dremel tool but the branches are so thin and flexible it would be impossible to fix at this point, it is much less apparent in life, the photos exaggerate the branches, especially the close ups to show the leaf detail.

koniminiatures wrote:

How do the laser-cut leaves come about, though? (I've only seen it done in Portal 2, and don't expect their rendering of the process to have been wildly true-to-life.) Do you enjoy access to an industrial laser-cutting machine, or are there hobby-grade applications around? Do you design the leaves yourself, then order them from a third party in a selected number and hue? I'm just curious, that's all. They look ever so nifty, you see!

I have a friend who has a laser cutter, she can cut anything up to 1/4 inch soft metals such as aluminium. I have looked into my own laser cutters and they are still expensive but affordably if I save for one, the reason I have not done it myself is the computer training I would need to input the cutting instructions is complicated and I don't have the time to learn it right now, maybe once I feel better and can take a class. When my friend does it she uses several different types of parchment and paper for me, I send her pen and ink drawings of the leaves along with the actual size I want cut and the number of leaves and paper type, she sends me a price based on the number of minutes each leaf takes to cut, and she can cut 4 leaves at a time. She cuts about 35 different types of palm fronds along with 5 or 6 other types of larger plant leaves like ferns and papaya leaves. The cuts are incredibly accurate based on my drawings, making extremely accurate reproductions of the palms or in this case, ginkgo leaves.

Ooh, thank you for the info! That is very interesting. I've only come across laser-cut items in metal before and have always wondered about the general procurement of such things. I would imagine the computer training needed is, yes, on the sophisticated side.

Hope your condition stays manageable at the very least, and won't completely prevent you from creating more of these wonderful sculptures for us to see.