Artificial Branch Advise?

[Maurer3D]

I am looking for advice on making dowel rods look more like something found in nature.

I am open to almost all options. Basically I am building latices out of dowel rods to support a vine system and live plants.

Here's what I was thinking.

• Paint the dowels with a latex based paint (one coat black)
• Let it dry.
• Paint second coat brown.
• Blast with coconut fiber right away (by blast I mean pack it up to the dowels)
• Let dry.

Anyone have any tips or advise on improving this. I do plan on experimenting a bit also.