Working on my small river and painted the bottom and did two layers of the water medium and I just don’t like the color of the river bottom. Was wondering if it would just be okay to paint over the first two layers then finish up with the final layers. If anybody has any suggestions I would appreciate the help.
your options are to paint over what you have down already as you asked or tint the layers you’re adding over what you have already done. Mainly depends on whether it’s just a matter of the color being too light or just completely off what you want. You will lose any detail on the bottom with the paint over method but it’s probably preferable to ripping it all out to start over. Hope that helps. J.R.
I would just paint over it and pour another layer or two. By tinting what’s to come, are you assured it will be the right combo to look through? Maybe it will look no better, maybe not…or worse.
Crandell
Give it a try … but frankly, river and creek scenes if they are well done tend to be “signature scenes” that visitors will really focus on. if it does not look like you really wanted and hoped it to look, it is going to bug you and bug you and frankly, now is the best time to rip it out, benefit from your experience, and start over.
Without knowing what effect it is you want, for my creek my prototype was a sluggish creek about 2 feet deep and when you’d look into it, the bottom was covered with greenish – well,we called it “seaweed” although of course it was not seaweed. I used Woodland Scenics medium green ground foam over a dirt colored base just as if it was going to be a lawn or field, with some Z scale ballast where the twisty creek bed would accumulate rocks, and it ended up looking just the way I wanted. My point is I did not rely just on coloring the bottom of the bed but also textured it.
Dave Nelson
I’m more in agreement with Dave than with the others. Unless you have a lot of time and effort invested in a detailed creek bottom (which you’d likely lose if you just painted over it), I’d rip it out and start over.
The illusion of depth is created by progressively darker shades of black towards the center of the water and progressively less bottom detail. An airbrush really shines here, because this is one area where it’s hard to get proper blending using washes.