It has often been said that Nature reproduces herself on many scales.  I had been diligently searching for the miniature representation of large Pine trees during various hikes in the Rocky Mountains but nothing really had the right texture.  I kept looking for something similiar to the Red Cedar of Northern Michigan that grows on [...]

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One of my favorite techniques for background trees is the tried and true bottle brush technique. They are cheap and easy to make. Even with my short attention span, I can knock out a dozen pretty quick.
Material List:

Sisal Twine
Wire – Lately I have been using 18 Gauge aluminum wire but I while I [...]

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Coloring the plaster castings is one of those things that actual evokes a certain amount of fear and loathing. I can never seem to attain what I consider to be authentic colors or at least colors that look reasonable to my eye. After some initial missteps and a few practice runs I have [...]

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I have been focused on completing some of the basic scenery lately. Minus coloring rock castings, it has been coming along nicely. The rock coloring has been a struggle. At last week’s Great Train Expo show in Denver I picked up Darryl Huffman’s DVD titled “Easy Rock Casting and Coloring”. I [...]

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There are often times where one is left with gaps or odd elevation changes where trying to use cardboard strip and plaster cloth scenery would not work and it is too large of a gap to cover with Sculptamold. Here is an example:

A solution that I have found is to use foam in a [...]

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I have never used Sculptamold as I could not understand what was so special about it based on descriptions from magazine articles. It was described as a paper-mache like product. The only thing I could remember about paper-mache is that it smells and sometimes molds due to its organic nature. I used [...]

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After completing the plaster cloth scenery, it was time to make some cliff faces using latex molds and plaster.

Here are a few tips:

Mix the plaster in approximately a 2 to 1 ratio of plaster to water. It seems that I have more problems with air bubbles if the plaster is thicker rather than thinner. [...]

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Saturday morning I applied plaster cloth until I ran out. I was able to complete the area in the vicinity of Camp One. I have more in the mail from Micro-Mark. By the time I return from a business trip to California next weekend, I should have plenty of supplies on hand.

If [...]

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