WIP - The forest's map

[Mark Oliva]

Here is one of the leaves. Anyone have any kind of idea what type of tree this is?

This looks quite a bit like a northern red oak, also known as a champion oak (Quercus rubra also sometimes as Quercus borealis). Its a native of North America, but it has migrated to Europe and other regions. When the weather is right, the leaves can turn dark red in autumn. See the picture at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_rubra

The picture of a leaf is a bit misleading. They usually tend to look more like your picture rather than the Wikipedia leaf picture. You can verify that by looking at the leaves on the trees in the other Wikipedia photos.

I know of a number of locations here in Northern Bavaria where there are stands of Northern Red Oaks, which are called Roteichen in German. That translates to red oaks with the word northern dropped.

[zeichen]

post #20, looks like an oak leaf

[markem]

@Mark Oliva: Yes! The picture on the left at Wikipedia does look a lot like the leaves I've collected. Thanks!
@zeichen: I was thinking it was an oak leaf but when I Googled it - none of the leaves looked like the ones I had. Mark hit it on the head though. The Wikipedia page has a picture on the left that looks more like what I have.

Here are a couple more pictures. The site won't let me upload full 600dpi images so I am having to cut them down a bit. If anyone is interested in these images for whatever reason I can set up a download one of my websites. Let me know if you are interested in them. :-)

[Mark Oliva]

Here are a couple more pictures.

I'd guess it's a white oak (Quercus alba). Compare your leaves with the autumn leaves turned red on the Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_alba

[markem]

@Mark - those were from the same tree. :-) These trees though are straight and very slender unlike most oak trees. I'm sure it has more to do with how the city's workers are trimming it than anything else. But I do think it is the red oak tree you mentioned before.

Today I got ten dead leaves from around a couple of the trees. I have them here at work. People thought it was my lunch because I had them in a bag. But no - had spaghetti for lunch. Made a huge pot of sauce and spaghetti. Now I get to eat it for a few days. It came out very good. I used Ms. Dash' Tomato & Basil in the sauce. Really good. Yum!

[zeichen]

They are all oak leaves. The difference between white and red oak can be seen in the difference between jagged points and rounded points. There is also a difference in the ratio between deep and shallow grooves. To be honest, I haven't studied them in over 20 years so I forget the exact proportions.

There can be quite a variation of color and size on leaves even from the same tree.

Stop raking leaves and start scanning and creating. I want to see more of your map. LOL

[markem]

Working it. I made my first nozzle this morning to spray onto the trees. I really didn't think about what I was doing. I left the leaves with their stems pointing to the right. Now the trees look as if they threw-up leaves all over themselves. Blech. :-/ Next try tonight before I go to bed. Need to scan in the dead leaves because those are going to be the ones on the ground mostly. I have to find some way to color them so I can have yellow and red leaves also. I'm hoping Corel Painter X can do this. I also have RealDraw Pro and it might work too. If you haven't tried RealDraw Pro - it has some really fantastic things it can do. I really love the liquid gold that you can make something in to. Oh well, hopefully an upload tonight or tomorrow. :-)

[markem]

New leaves applied to trees and ground around the base of the trees



Next is to finish scanning in the brown leaves and use them behind the trees with the yellow and red leaves on the ground. I still have some darker leaves to put onto the tree tops which will act as shadows. Working on them.

[zeichen]

I really like that. One thing though try to overlap leaves and arrange them so the stems are just floating in air. You want to give the appearance that they are apart of the tree.

You could do an under layer of thin branches with reduced opacity to enhance the feel of reality.

[markem]

@zeichen: Sounds great! Actually, I just realized that that image is not the current one. I thought I had uploaded it. Oh well, working on the ground now. A wagon road is supposed to curve out of the left tree and into the distance where a forest is located. Beyond the forest, in the background, are the two mountains with the other mountains going off to the left and right. The gap between them is where the road leads. I've thrown away several tries. They looked sort of cartoonish and after several erasures the paper just wasn't looking like it would survive. I even use those white erasers that are not supposed to damage the paper. So just a few erasings of my work. I should be able to get something up on the site this weekend. Even though I have lab work that has to be done, my younger brother asked if I'd come out and put the piano into the back of my truck for delivery to Goodwill, and my wife would like to go see The Avengers. So somewhere in there I am going to find the time to do more drawing. At least i hope I have the time to do it. Maybe while I'm sitting in the waiting room to do the lab tests. :-)