Creating realistic timber (how?)

[L i am]

Hi all, I need to learn how to model and render very organic timber/wood. I have attached some images the renders I have done (the Wigwam and "fairy garden log")However they take a while and are not optimal I have achieved these with standard techniques. The real wood images are like what I aim to achieve.
Are there techniques with mapping and texturing that would improve my efficiency and produce more realistic results? I have seen some pretty amazing things done with texture and I assume "bump" but that is beyond my skill level ATM. Can somebody please let me know if there is another approach I should learn for better results.

[Rich O Brien]

To match the images you show you need to either UV unwrap the mesh and texture paint.

Or sculpt the mesh and bake the high poly to a lower poly mesh.

Both non-novice topics and activities.

For displacement to work properly in rendering you need tessellated surfaces and SketchUp isn't suited to too much tessellation.

The most efficient way to do this is to trick the eye with texture detail rather than mesh detail.