“Wild is the music of the autumnal winds amongst the faded woods.” – William Wordsworth

In modeling anything... Trains, Boats, Houses, Miniature Wargames... Anything... You can purchase ready-made items, or make them yourself. The trees were purchased from Grand Central Gems. These trees are perfect, and are amazing. The color, and the leaves are perfect for fall. The trees are a little expensive, but worth every penny. They really make the scene pop in color and in life! This helps to blend that 2D into 3D. I tried making trees and they came out ok. However, ok is not good enough in this instance. I can't hide the ok trees in the back of the forest on a huge layout. There are only a few trees in a tiny space directly in front of the viewer. Therefore they have to be perfect. Many model trees just have one giant piece of cotton ball ,or lichen. The Grand Central Gems trees have leaves! Yes, leaves on actual wood trunks. They are perfectly photogenic.

I only wish I had more details to add into these woods. Not all trees are still alive in the wild woods. It is fall, and as the trees drop their leaves, it would show not only leaf litter, but also the dead trees. Un-maintained forests have dead plants. The plant or tree falls over when it dies. Because that area is not cleared, it remains to rot where it fell. The "logs" are made from sticks that were dried from the garden. Then, they were painted. Remember it is not just a log. First, you have to paint the log to look like a log. I know it sounds odd. Painting the log actually makes it look more like a log as you can control light, shade, and bark. If you don't paint it, It will probably just look like a stick, which is what it is. Second, you can paint on the moss, lichen, and anything else you want too add. It is really easy to do. I just use a paintbrush to paint a small patch of color into a small square of wire screen. Holding it a few inches from the now-painted log, I then blow hard on the screen with wet paint. This causes the wet paint flecks to splatter in neat ways on the log. Instant mold, or moss growth.

When logs and wood rots, then mushrooms can grow. A few are leftovers from a partial kit I purchased. They are nice, but I wanted more. Some are made from Das modeling clay. Yes, air drying, children's, non-toxic modeling clay. Simply roll out a round length of modeling clay for the stem of the mushroom. You will cut this later to length. Then make a small ball of clay, squish it into a rounded shape, like a pizza, and let it dry. Then, glue the two pieces together. All that is left is to paint them. It will take a few attempts to perfect this method, but it's worth the try. It is $10 for a handful of pre-made mushrooms. It also cost me $2 of Das Clay to make about 100 of my own. Draw your own conclusions. Like I said, I want to help the reader save money with tips and ideas when I can.

The plants are from several manufacturers from a group of half-used scenery stuff I picked up cheap at the local hobby shop. Weeds and flowers grow wild together in the un-maintained (wild) woods. Some weeds are actually considered to be flowers, or food in some places. Like the dandelion. However, the same models can be made for flowers with card stock, painted, and colored foam flock. This will be a later article. It is easy and fun to do.

Blend Not Bland

All these details combined with the background to hopefully create a seamless transition between the two. The 2D trees in the background and the 3D trees on the layout match. Some of the grass also matches. If it's dark green in the backdrop, that grass area starts dark green near the 2D photo. If it has an orange bush in the photo, it has an orange bush placed in the transition. A few times I added a contrast color like red in front of yellow to break up a little of the matching. However, this should not be done too much. If we did not occasionally break up seamless color transition, everything would start to mute together as the colors wash out the model. This is important to tie the 2 scenes together.

It's fall on my layout. October 32nd to be exact. That is because you can see all the great fall colors with the rich dead, and dark colors of winter starting to form. Those dark colors are best shown in the soil. The rich dark, and muddy soil of winter. This is also further shown by the grass. The grass is browning for winter. Not all grass is the same on the front lawn, let alone in nature. That is why the grass is made from many different colored and sized clumps of grass. These are made from loose static grass that are made into small clumps with a static grass applicator. My parents purchased one from Woodland Scenics for me before Covid. At first, I was wary of using the applicator, but it turned out to be very useful. It saved so much money versus buying all those individual grass clumps from packs. Just be creative and choose colors that you like. Just have fun with it!