Barking Up The Right Tree!

Last July, I ordered 5 ounces of birch tree bark from Valliant, Oklahoma, as examples to follow out of paper for the main Halfland set background (upper right).

Upper left is a frame from a Canadian vlog I follow. It had the right look. I will be emulating as much as possible the trunks, foliage, ground cover, etc. Crude is good for this as the entire background will be very out of focus, a watercolor impression of it.

I white-washed a heck ton of torn pieces of thick craft packaging paper, let them dry, tore the edges again to get the organic brown color back, and then tore off small painted pieces off the surface for more texture.

Third from the left, bottom row, shows a pile of my bark imitations. These will be used on my cardboard tube birch trunks to create faces like the ones I see on my backyard Cypress tree trunks.