I am having a great deal of difficultly trying to get the colors correct on my layout. I borrowed a couple of real photos from www.mongabay.com as seen below.
And these are my photos of my layout.
I haven’t added the realistic water yet, I’m just trying to get color right. Does it look close the colors of my layout?
I’m told that I’m color blind and its not even close. Does anybody have any suggestions?
Well, most rivers are brown/black.
Do you really want a blue river?
Even if one exists in reality, the blue in water is really just a reflection of the sky. It might look wrong no matter how right you are.
That said, what you have looks not bad so far.
I’d have to agree with Craig here.
Your coloring looks like a good match to the photo’s, but that is kind of an unusual color for a river. Is that a hot spring or a mineral spring? It kinda looks like it. If you’re really married to that color, I’d add some darker blue places like the bottom prototype pic to add some depth, otherwise it’s going to look very shallow.
If it was me, I’d be going for more browns, gark greens and blacks. Maybe something more like these…
http://www.glowa-jordan-river.de/uploads/Main/jordan_river.jpg
http://www.gvrd.bc.ca/parks/gifs/Capilano-River_photo2.gif
http://members.optusnet.com.au/aquatichabitats/Barron_river.jpg
http://www.hickerphoto.com/data/media/10/fraser-river-rafting_9509.jpg
I’d say it depends on which area of the country you’re modeling. If it’s the West, which your original photo seems to show, then yes, your color is pretty much on, because most of the riverbeds in the Rockies and Sierra are rock-based, and the water tends to run pretty clear and fast, reflecting more of the sky. I know rivers in other parts of the country tend to be darker and less clear because of a more silt-based riverbed, and even out here in California, we have some darker rivers, especially in the Central Valley (Sacramento, San Joaquin rivers) but that’s after they’ve hit lower elevations and are picking up a lot of silt in the water. In the West, the Colorado is a good example of both–it runs quite clear in the upper reaches, but once it hits Utah and Arizona, which have a lot of sandstone in the rocks, it picks up more silt and runs darker. However, there are even portions of the river in the Grand Canyon that run clear, because of geological differences in the river bed. And I’ve been on the Virgin River in Utah, which tends to run fairly clear, even though it cuts through sedimentary rock. It’s pretty much the geology of the river bed itself that determines the color of the river.
Yours looks pretty accurate for the country you’re modeling, IMO. However, like PCarell, I’d recommend some darker shades in what you would ordinarily consider the deeper parts of the channel–feathering from a dark blue to black. But sparingly.
Tom
The 1st photos are actually of the Little Colorado River, a tributary of the Colorado River in Arizona
This new photo is of the Colorado River in front of Harrahs, Laughlin, Nevada
URL=http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1014497927001069572oPOITAOynp]
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Can’t help much. I’m back east where all the rivers are murky, the fish have lesions, and the only thing you catch when you’re fishing are tires, shopping carts, and the occasional crack dealer.
But I would shy away from the bright blue. It’ll look more realistic if you make your riverbed detailed with rocks and what not, then use a clear acrylic gloss medium tinted with some blue and green paint. Not enough to make it solid, just a tint.
Lee
I would go with a very dark green almost black color for water.
spackle and sand any imperfections in the board.
paint the water a very dark shade of dark green mixed with black.
feather in some light greens and tans to form a shoreline around the edges of the water.
use envirotex, matte medium, or woodland scenics water to form the water itself. Make
thin pours and allow it to dry between pours…chuck
Thanks guys, I guess I’m going to shot for the Barron_River that pcarrel had. I have seen the Colorado River look like that. I have not tried the browns and I’m a little afraid of black but I did try feathering some dark green in originally and it looked awful. Maybe because it was missing the browns & black.
Lee mentioned rocks and I did see a lot for great layout photos with rock. Is that something you buy or make yourself?
JohnnyB
I let the Creator make the rocks, I just borrow a few…
Lee
Sleeper, your first two prototype pics have a look I’m familiar with from climbing, another hobby. They are quite different from the picture of the Colorado River in Nevada posted later.
There, the blue color is a reflection from the sky. In your case, those pics look just like many of the glacial runoff streams I’ve see. The water itself, and perhaps the streambed, may well be the source of the pale blue color in your prototype pics.
In a real river, the perceived color is mostly a product of three variables, the color of the bed, the color of the water itself, and the nature, depth, and color of the reflections the sky imparts to the surface. In my OPINION, you might be able to match an effect by using a different variable, example, if you matched the look of the bed by changing how your layout water reflected light, or if you matched a water color by painting the bed, BUT, if you do, you are likely to see unintended effects when you move from place to place and change viewing angle. In my opinion, you will be best served matching the bed to the prototype, the water tint to the prototype, then use reflection to fine tune it.
A glacier grinds up a LOT of rock as it moves, and the runoff water contains a high degree of rock fragments, known as “glacial flour”. Drinking that stuff is reported to be very bad news, and I’ve never done it. Drinking straight glacial melt, without the flour, is a problem too, as it has zero minerals and will leach critical minerals out of your system.
Anyway, if your stream is glacier fed, and you are sure you want to model a river that is going to look pretty strange, even though the prototype looks just as strange, even when you’re standing beside it, then I think the color in the stream bed in your second layout pic, (not sure what the darker blues beside the streambed are but they don’t match the prototype pics) is right where you want to be.
Envirotex, melted hobby-water beads,
Lee,Come to Lake Erie and the Ohio waters…There’s fish aplenty to be caught…
Actually most waters I seen in Ohio is dark blue to a greenish color.
Lake Erie can have a light blue color of a summer day.
It’s amazing how things evolve. At first, my layout colors was going to be very basic; green for grass, blue for water, brown for dirt. I don’t know what happened.
I’m trying to keep with the desert scene, but I just HAD to have a river. The rivers of the desert are mostly upside down with the sandy riverbed on top and the water is running underneath. Every so often there is break in elevation where there are these fantastic falls and pools of crystal clear water.
I got the idea for my river from photos of a place that my boss went to. It’s not to far away from where I live although I have not been there yet. You can only reach it by hiking in or renting pack mules. I saw this place on the Travel Channel and I did have the Internet photos marked as a favorite, but I can’t find it anymore.
Colorado River is the closest visible river near me and I might retire near there in a couple years unless I find a better place, so anyway for now I’ve decided to try for that.
Lee,
Outstanding scene and very timely for me as well since I have just started working a similar looking scene on my layout. Mine will be a twisting, cascading, river but I the color of your river bed looks about what I have in mind and I also intend to use real stones to simulate boulders. What colors did you use to color the river bottom and what did you apply to the rocks to give then the wet look?
My only advice would be that with just about everything else with scenery development, if it doesn’t look right, it is fairly easy and inexpensive to keep reworking it until it does look right. The only difference with a water feature is you have to get it right before you finally pour whatever water material you intend to use. But you can test the look before you make that final commitment by first pouring real water into the water feature and see how it looks. The final product should give you a similar look although if you intend to create ripple water, real water can’t reproduce that look. This is something I think you would want to do anyway as it will reveal any leaks your river bed might have before you make your final pour.
LEAKS! [%-)] I didn’t even think about that. Is that a real problem?
When I first did my creek bed I tried to use a blending mix of colors: blackish in the middle fading to a green/blue and then to lighter colors closer to the shore. I thought I had it looking good and did a 1/8" pour of Envirotex.
I was not happy with the color a few days later as it was much too green. After thinking about it for a few days, I decided to paint a new creek bed right on top of the hardened Envirotex.
This time the primary color was a deep Navy Blue with just a little green and a little tan fading to the shore. I then poured another layer of 1/8" Envirotex and liked the way it looked.
So I have two creek beds, but one is buried never to be seen again.
It certainly can be. The only way you know for sure you have a water tight bed is do a test pour with real water. If the real water stays in the bed, your simulated water material should as well. You don’t want to be surprised to find the next day you have created a water feature on the floor of your layout room. It doesn’t take much of a crack to allow everything to flow out onto the floor.
I made this little presentation on how I did my river scene…
It’s kind of a ginormous file, so give it a minute to load.
Lee
Why do I have a sudden urge to go fishing?
Paul
Ok, guys it was a beautiful warm sunny day in Southern Calif. so I had to catch up on all my outside chores. I even managed to get my wife to help me move my layout outside so that I could spray paint my mountains, again.
I haven’t started painting my river yet because I need to get some paint and materials for the waterfall. I looked at Lee’s river scene presentation, which is very helpful, and I checked out the riverbed for leaks. I painted the river so many times, that I’m sure its not going to leak. I’m not so sure about the little lake that feeds the waterfall though. I carved it in to 2 in. foam with a hot curved wire and then painted it. I don’t know if foam holds water because it looks like a sponge and I couldn’t test it because I was spraypainting.
I don’t know where to buy “white poly fiber” or “gloss medium”, and I don’t know what “White water highlights” is but I am going to at least paint the river bed tomorrow.