Gee, guys … (blush). [:I]
Here’s a photo of the pond in context:
(click to enlarge)
The stream runs out of a culvert that goes under a highway, and the highway runs under the railroad, which goes over the highway on a bridge.
You can see the railroad part of the scene in my web site header:
(click to enlarge)
Joe,
No fair! You blew me away with the pic of just the pond/stream/waterfall and now you go show the whole scene. I love the way you combine the various colors/textures of the surrounding vegatation - looks great and it is something that many (including me) never give much thought to, until we see it. I can “see” the path the fisherman must have taken to get to his spot. I also have to say “great job” in getting the road higher than the surrounding area - again something many of us miss. Please share with us (or at least me) the colors you used on the road and technique used.
Dave
I hope you realize that you don’t need to dull all of the rocks down. I a stream, rocks get wet, and some of them should be wet all over, even if they jut up above the level of the stream. Wave action, spray (if near a fall or rapids, passing boats, swimmers, etc.: all these keep rocks partially in water wet up to levels higher than the water itself.
Agreed, pallalin. Due to the movement of water in a chaotic way, the upstream faces of midstream rocks will be largely wet, especially in the late spring.
Joe, far be it above me to suggest an improvement to The Man [:)], but some day, when you have nothing else to do, may I suggest polishing to glass-like the face of that creek, where it was dammed by whatever you use. That way, an observer will have an aquarium-like view into the stream. I think the effect would be stunning…not to say that it already isn’t.
Respectfully…
Palallin:
True, however, this inial post wasn’t really about rocks being wet as much as it was about envirotex and it’s annoying tendency to crawl up rocks and other things that stick up above the surface of the water.
Painting over the edges of rocks to “disguise” the crawl is easily done. However, I think it’s important to point out that the “crawl” is much harder to hide on things like pilings. See this diagram:
Painting the “crawl” on this piling will look funny. The trick here is to first coat the bottom of the pilings with vaseline. Then the envirotex crawl will be concave instead of convex. Using a small bru***o paint a bit of acrylic gloss medium around each piling, you can fill up the “hole” and things will look like they should.
So if you paint the crawl on a rock, you just have a bigger rock. But for structural object like pilings and bridge piers, etc, it’s best to first coat the area with vaseline, and then repair the edge with gloss medium.
Dave:
The road techique is described on my website in detail at this link: http://siskiyou.railfan.net/model/constructionNotes/roads.html
For a larger image, click here.
I build my roads using 0.030 styrene. Using some sort of plaster method for paved roads, to me is just asking for a lot of work. To get it to look right you should install forms, pour the plaster, smooth it with a putty knife, remove the forms, sand the road (and make a dusty mess all over everything), then paint it and add the lines.
I prefer to use the styrene instead since it’s very easy to get a nice smooth looking road. I first rough in the road location on the scenery by cutting a piece of cardboard and hot gluing it onto the cardboard strips before I plaster the area. I plan on the rough surface of the road being about a half inch below the level I will eventually want later.
After roughing in the road along with the rest of the scenery plastering, I cut a pattern for the road out of thin cardboard, and test fit it in the location until I get exactly the shape I want. I use this pattern to cut out the styrene.
I put the road down and shim with stripwood to get it just the level I want. I glue the stripwood in place with white glue or latex caulking and let it set up. The road has not yet been fastened down.
I glue the road down with latex caulking, and use weights to hold it in place until it sets up. Next, plaster the edges to form a natural contour with the nearby scenery. Make sure and leave room for ditches.
Then I paint the road with gray acrylics, with just a tad bit of brown mixed in. I don’t try especially hard to avoid streaks in the color and make sure the paint strokes run down the length of the road, not across it.
I mask off the road lines and paint them using an airbrush or a can of
Joe,
Thanks! Love the website!! Good and very helpful hint re: piling in water!!
Dave
