You know Rick and Southern Oregon, it's typical to see deciduous trees lining a water course like we have here at Timow Creek on my Siskie 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 out making these great looking trees. Okay then, 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 1 ¼ 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. These are some super tree twigs that I've selected and prepped to make them tougher and less susceptible to damage. It 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 1 part mat medium to 5 parts water. Then dip each twig into the mat medium solution and let it soak for 2 to 3 minutes. The mat medium will dry to a tough rubbery film, making the twigs more durable and resistant to damage. Remove each soaked twig and tap it against newspaper to remove any excess mat medium. I've strung some heavy twine overhead and I clip the twig to the line to dry using a close pin. If the twig has any unnatural curve, the mat medium solution usually softens the twig a bit. So I just clip a close pin on the end as a way 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 super-hold hairspray and finally get yourself some coarse, grind-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 prep super-tree twigs in a block of styrofoam so we can do several of the time. Let's paint the trunk, so 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 paint 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 super-hold 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, a 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 then 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 all 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 1, 3 and 5. Also trees tend to grow and grow in their water like next to Tim Maul 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 square to 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 has a greater sense of distance and depth to the scene. You can find a small all if you go into Google and type mini-all. You'll get several options to choose from either in sets with various hooks or separately as a single all. It often works good to use a motor tool cut off disk to sharpen the point on the all 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 H20 latex spray paint. It's a great water-based low-oder spray paint. Just go into Google and type Krylon H20.