Okay. This week was very exhaustive for me. I managed to re-scape this tank twice in a week.
First attempt:
IMG_1791 by
bialix1, on Flickr
First attempt result didn't look good enough for me, so I decided to change it. I'm glad I took picture in an empty tank so I could compare 2 photos and find out the position of wood slightly differ. Let's look:
IMG_1785 by
bialix1, on Flickr
One can clearly see that angle of the wood is not the same, therefore that hole between vertical branches in the upper part of the wood looks bigger in planted version. Also I wanted to use my new
precious plant anubias nana "gold" with its distinctive lime green leaves, so I put it entirely at right side. It was looking good live after planting but too bright on photo.
So 2 days later I managed to refine the layout. I did read some articles on aquascaping techniques and some art methods, and decided to get rid of lime green anubias on the hill, and use 2 kinds of usual dark green anubias instead: smaller "petite" at the back, and bigger nana closer to front glass to imitate linear perspective. Also I changed angle position of the wood: now its right part is closer to front glass, so horizontal branch ain't parallel to front glass anymore. The water is quite murky and milky due to bacterial colonization bloom. I expect the water will clear in couple of days.
I think even milky photos are better than nothing, so here they are:
Front view (2014/10/23) by
bialix1, on Flickr
I don't quite happy with vertical branch without bark. It's too straight and vertical. I think I should decorate it with some moss.
Sides:
Right side (2014/10/23) by
bialix1, on Flickr
Left side (2014/10/23) by
bialix1, on Flickr
I'm going to put some moss on vertical branch this weekend, so I'd be happy to hear your feedback, so I can improve the layout even further.
As you can see I mostly used slow grower plants. The reason for this is quite simple. My sister don't have too much free time for pruning fast-grower plants (and obviously a little bit less passion to scaping than me), and also I can't see this tank often enough to be able to adjust the way it grows. So my intent is to have almost finished state right from the beginning, and only occasional trimming (once in month/couple months) will be required. I hope such layout can last for next 1-2 years without re-scaping. For some reason my sister don't get very excited about rescaping and all side effects that process involves, like a lot of buckets with dirty water around the room, cleaning/washing the tank, and so on