 You know, Rick, in Southern Oregon, it's typical to see deciduous trees lining a water course like we have here at Timah Creek on my Siski line. In this segment, I'm going to show how to make realistic looking deciduous trees, like these, very easily. You know, I have really been looking forward to seeing how you go about making these great looking trees. Okay, then. Well, let's get started. I like super trees from Scenic Express. They sell a natural plant with an intricate branch structure as a product they call super trees. I like to order the one quarter bushel super trees value pack for about $25. They say it makes 30 to 35 trees, but I find I can get 100 or more trees from this pack making it very economical. Sounds like a great deal for 25 bucks. These are some super tree twigs that I've selected and prepped to make them tougher and less susceptible to damage. Looks like a pretty involved process. What's that look like? I sit down with a large bowl and the super trees value pack bush and look for twigs that have a natural looking tree shape. Here's a good example. The twig may have some unnatural curve to it, but I'll show you how we fix that in a minute. Also, some twigs may have large unnatural looking leaves. I just use some tweezers to remove them. I put each twig I select into a large bowl. I mix up a solution of one part matte medium to five parts water. Then dip each twig into the matte medium solution and let it soak for two to three minutes. The matte medium will dry to a tough rubbery film making the twigs more durable and resistant to damage. I remove each soaked twig and tap it against newspaper to remove any excess matte medium. I've strung some heavy twine overhead and I clip the twig to the line to dry using a clothespin. If the twig has any unnatural curve, the matte medium solution usually softens the twig a bit. So I just clip a clothespin on the end as a weight to pull it straight while it dries. I let the twigs dry overnight. Oh, that's all there is to it? Yep, and here's 50 twigs all dried overnight and ready to go. Well, let's make some trees. For some materials you need some cheap spray paint. Get yourself some gray, tan, brown, and black for painting the basic trunk color. And get a mix of greens and yellows for foliage colors. Get yourself some cheap Superhold hairspray. And finally, get yourself some coarse, grime, ground foam in a medium color. The exact color doesn't really matter because we'll control the final color with spray paint. Here, Rick, I've stuck some prepped SuperTree twigs in a block of Styrofoam so we can do several at a time. Let's paint the trunks a good trunk color. Let's use this tan. You can spray the trunks outside during the summer or if you do them indoors like we're doing here, make sure you use a spray booth to expel any harmful fumes outside. Okay, Joe, so we're just going to pan with this? Yep. And cover them well, Rick, from both sides with the paint. Okay, good. Now I like to take the black paint and darken just the tips of the branches lightly, like this. All right, take the Superhold hairspray and spray just the body of the tree. Try to keep away from the trunk and get just the body. Okay. Okay, hold the trees over the ground foam box and sprinkle on the foam. Okay. Depending on how heavy you sprinkle on the foam, you can control how dense the tree is. I prefer to go just a tad light so the tree has somewhat of a see-through quality. Okay, got it. How's this? Yep, that's good. Okay, Rick, take this can of medium green spray paint and spray it on all around on just the foliage. Okay. This gives the tree foliage its final color. Focus on the foliage and avoid spraying the trunk. Finally, for one more step that really gives you trees that extra touch of realism. I take light yellow paint and spray it on just lightly from above to highlight the tree foliage and to make it look like it's outdoors in the sun. Hey, that's clever. It looks really easy. Yes, easy and very effective. Here we go, Rick. Five trees ready to plant and it only took us a few minutes. Wow, that's quick and they look great too. So let's make some more trees and then later we'll plant them. I like to use an awl to poke holes in the scenery like this. Add some hot glue. Then I simply stick the tree trunk into the hole and there we go. The tree's planted. Trees seem to look best when planted in groups of odd numbers like one, three and five. Also, trees tend to grow and grows near water like next to Timbuk Creek in this scene. Sometimes a bit of plaster dust will get around the hole, but not to worry. Just brush a little dirt weathering powder around the hole and give it a squirt of water to fix it in place. I also planted some more trees elsewhere using larger trees in the foreground and smaller trees in the background which adds a greater sense of distance and depth to the scene. You can find a small awl if you go into Google and type mini awl. You'll get several options to choose from either in sets with various hooks or separately as a single awl. It often works good to use a motor tool cutoff disc to sharpen the point on the awl so that it's needle sharp. A final comment on the paints I use for tree colors. I like to use Design Master Color Tool Spray Paints. I especially like their basil green. It's a hard to find medium yellow green color that's perfect for modeling many species of deciduous trees. They have a nice assortment of vegetation colors in their paint line and, to top it off, their paints environmentally friendly. Their website is www.dmcolor.com. Another favorite is Krylon H2O Latex Spray Paint. It's a great water-based, low odor spray paint. Just go into Google and type Krylon H2O.