A week ago, the view from the ‘office’. The office being a chair on a dock pontoon for a short break away from normal life. This is the Canadian ‘Near North’ a days drive directly north from Toronto. The benefits of getting away from civilisation are refreshing, the nearest shop, a trading post and post office is 7km away, essential if posting a beaver or two, and the nearest town, doctors etc., 60km away. That’s a bit of an eye opener for us brits, like driving from London to Oxford to go to your nearest fish and chip shop!
This is the view from the ‘local’ fire lookout tower, you can’t see where we were based, it’s over the horizon 40km south of here, and nothing but a mix of deciduous and pine forest and lakes between. What being out in the True north did for me was to allow me to look at trees, unsurprisingly, they’re quite common in this area. When not fishing, I spent a bit of time in a Kayak which allows you to get into the shore line in remote areas.
I like the challenge of effectively modelling woodlands, and my current project is set deep in a wooded area, and the next one is already turning the cogs. For example how the pine trees and birch and maple grow together, they show a real interaction, woodland so often modelled as a block of similar masses of green. I’m looking to do two types of layout, one in winter and the other in the autumn change over, both shelf layouts and branch/short line subjects, winter for the UK and autumn for the True North.
Modelling specific locations require a good amount of observation to carry them convincingly and capturing the forest environment will be key to both projects.
The next steps in the layout builds is working out the fastest and best way to get a forest growing, the Woodland Scenics tree armatures and those from C&L already showing great promise. In the next week or so the new baseboard kit arrives, so I’ll have two simultaneous projects ticking over which should keep me on my toes..
And for the Canucks out there, thanks for the welcome and hospitality a real True North experience.
