Highlighting Willow Fern
A few people have asked how to paint the fern that is packaged with the Willow Tree Giant.
First of all, you will need to paint the entire metal model first before attaching the fern. If the fern is attached before the model is painted this becomes extremely difficult and fiddly!
The fern comes in a big clump secured with a metal clasp:
Cut off the fern at the clasp and seperate it into individual strands. Cut the length down to suit the model. Some strands may be a lot wider so these can be trimmed to match the others:
The fern is quite a dark green, so to get some contrast I used watered down light green. This is applied by gently wetbrushing the fern along its natural growth direction. In the picture below the direction of brush stoke would be left to right:
Once the green has dried, the tips of the fern strands can be painted with a khaki color before being attached to the model with superglue. I suggest starting with the beard first then work outwards for the branches:
So that's how I gave my Willow lashes a bit of color variation. Of course if you have an airbrush you could attach the strands then paint them as they hang from the model.
Image :
