mikelhh Crandell that's a marvellous ruffled surface. I'd like to see some views from down nearer water level sometime Mike
Crandell that's a marvellous ruffled surface. I'd like to see some views from down nearer water level sometime
Mike
Holy cow!! This...from The Master? Well, thank-you, Mike. I'll attempt a shot of some kind, probably a WPF shot since I'll have to set it up, and try to get well down to wave height. I'll have to, uh....dust the water first. It has been a while.
Crandell
I use acrylic gloss medium for my water, then touch up and add ripples with gloss gel. Here is a picture of a diorama I built for Take a Model Train to Work day 2008. The scenery and figures are a little slapdash -- a co-worker and I had a friendly competition, and I got in over my head with a farm at the other end, and didn't have time to do much on this end. Photo isn't great, either. It was taken in my cube at work, and would have looked better with a backdrop, an overhead "sky", and better lighting. Still, notice how the water reflects the things behind it. If you have sky in your backdrop, your water will look blue.
As others have said, the river is painted black, gradually fading to brown at the edges (I actually painted the black first, then added brown in progressively more dilute washes as I worked away from the edge. The stream coming down the hill is gloss gel dry-brushed with gloss white acrylic paint to simulate the foam.
Note that the water is only about 1/4" thick. From your scenery, it looks like you're expecting to make yours several inches deep. This may not work that well -- you may want to build up the scenery base so you're not trying to build up 12+ pours of resin / medium / Realistic Water / whatever.
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"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
I too would suggest you have a green to brown pond bed, rather than blue. It will look much more alive, like Mr B's.
Modelling the UK in 00, and New England - MEC, B&M, D&H and Guilford - in H0
I also used two-part epoxy resin from the hardware store. No evil odours with it, thankfully. Mine was poured in three layers, each layer tinted very slightly with acrylic paint. Brown first, then green, then blue-green because I didn't want a crystal clear trout stream.
The bed was painted so it graded to a lighter gravelly colour around the edges.
The resin dries with a very high gloss as said on the pack. To get surface ripples I had to watch over it as the final layer dried, and I repeatedly worked a bamboo skewer and a toothpick through it until, after maybe 90 minutes they started to take. If you're doing a more sheltered pond you would probably want smaller surface ruffles, if anything, and maybe Woodland Scenics water effects might be the go.
If you use resin you'll find it bulges at the edges and you'll need to tease out theses bulges with a toothpick. In the next pic you can see the results if you don't do that. The plan had been to have a bridge pier in the foreground, which is why I hadn't bothered in that spot at that stage.
I used acrylic gloss medium to get some smaller ripples onto the surface.
For a pond or lake, I would paint the 'bottom' burnt umber and darker, and then fade it to a greenish tan toward the shore. You can add grit for a pebbly bottom. You can make your water crystal clear or murky.
I made murky water, but with alluvial fines in it and glaciated water mixed with spring run-off such as found in the Thompson River in south-central British Columbia.
First I poured three layers of two-part epoxy found in the paints and finishes section of your hardware store. In the third pour I added a pinch of Plaster of Paris for turbidity, and a half-drop of Huader Medium Green in the Wal Mart crafts section's acrylic paints. For the final layer, all I did was spread a thin sheen of gel gloss medium, and then I turned the small foam brush on its side and stippled the spread gel gloss medium. I am pleased to say I got the "Thompson" look about right.
I use Envirotex Lite for my water. I always do several pours, which is necessary for proper bubble-free curing anyway, but it also gives me the opportunity to tint the mixture a bit differently at each level. This is the bottom level, showing some of the surrounding base. I actually cut the stream so that I had real depth, but most of the illusion is from painting the base and tinting the water. I used some real sand and rock castings for the stream bed and shoreline.
Here's the almost completed scene:
Downstream just a bit, I brought the trees in close to the shoreline, and ran the stream between two hydrocal rock castings, actually just small chips off of larger castings. This is typical of a New England look.
The next scene is still my favorite.
Again, the waterfowl are from Preiser. I use a lot of the light green "field grass" around my streams and ponds. When you pour Envirotex, it tends to creep up the sides of its boundries. So, I pour the Envirotex first, and after it hardens I touch up the edges. I use Aileen's Tacky Glue to hold the field grass in place, and sometimes add bits of flocking or turf at the edges.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
One of the last things I have to do with my section #1 is pour some water for my pond/lake. I could use some inspiration and some advice on what others have learned from creating a water scene like products and supplies, techniques and pitfalls.
Here is a pic of my section and where the lake will be.