THAT’S what that line’s talking about! Okay, makes sense.
This is a close-up of an HO-scale beaver swimming in the swamp of my layout. I used paint to tint the layers of Envirotex. For the final pour, after I poured the Envirotex, I stuck a toothpick into some light green craft paint and swirled it around. The result was unevenly-distributed green “pond scum.”
Musket Minatures makes the beavers, by the way. For the one that’s swimming, I cut the legs off and filed the bottom flat, creating a “waterline” beaver. I glued it on top of the next-to-last layer of Envirotex and then did the final pour around it.
technique I tried for “zero depth” water for 8x8 diorama contest that worked really well.
“water” area painted with black, dark green, and sand along bank, allowing over spray to blend colors.
I then gave water area a thin coat of gloss medium glue to make it water, I know, you’re thinking been there, done, that, nothing new here, but here is where it takes a curve.
While I thought the colors were good, and the glue’s transparent layer gave me the look of depth I wanted, I wasn’t happy with the overall appearance, it didn’t look wet. The high gloss reflective surface was not there.
Not sure what to do to fix it, I set this project aside and turned my attention to a passenger car that I had painted a couple of days before, and as S.O.P., I filled the airbrush cup with Future floor stuff to spay the car to prep it for decals.
Suddenly my brain farted out, “hey this stuff is just super high gloss clear acrylic paint” so I gave my not so wet looking water a shot of it, figuring it can’t make it any worse, and set it aside to dry.
Long story short, it worked great, my water now had the luster it needed!!
I guess my brain was overloaded with gas that week, because it said, " when you use this stuff on your floor, you just squirt it out of the bottle and spread it around with a sponge-mop because it’s self leveling".
I grabbed my little diorama, squirted out a puddle on the water, spread it around with my finger (the only tool “handy” at the time), and let it dry. the result was the same as the spayed version the day before.
here are the results
[IMG]http://i46.ph
[8D]
catfish do not jump btw, they are bottom feeders.[swg]
If you look back at all the pictures, you’ll see something no one has mentioned - the vegetation along the shores. This is really a key item. Not only does it hide the edges, it also provides something which reflects off the smooth surface. I like to apply tall grass and other foliage after the Envirotex is set. It does like to “creep” up the edges of the water surface, so I can hide that with other scenic materials later. Overhanging trees have a nice appearance, too.
My thoughts on blue water.Water is gloss medium over a mix of Cobalt Blue,Black,with a touch of Thicket a greenish colour.This is my version of the Grand river which splits my home town (Grand Rapids) in half.The normal colour of the Grand is NOT a colour I want on my layout.
This area is still very much under construction so the photo took a quick trip through paint.
Unless it:
- is a natural spring in FL
- contains minerals (e.g. Travertine)
- is fed by melting glacier, or
- is the ocean,
water should be either dark green or muddy brown in appearance. Even if the water is clear, the “color” will often times come from depth of the water or the underlying deposits (rocks, soil, vegetation) in the water.
Tom
The water in my version of the Maitland River (southwestern Ontario) is based on the colour of the Grand River (southern Ontario) in spring flood, and it’s definitely not blue[swg]:
It does clear-up somewhat as it enters Lake Erie, though (the real Maitland flows into Lake Huron, while the Grand does flow into Erie), but it’s still not blue:
Here’s a view of the same area from above (photo courtesy of Secord Air Services):
Chippawa Creek is a shallower water course, and I represented it using the same dark grey-green paint as shown in the previous photo.
The sand bar and muddy water in the first two photos was done using the same “dirt” colour that I use for my basic landforms. Both colours are flat interior latex house paint. “White water” effects were done with Polly Scale Reefer White, and everything got three coats of high gloss water-based urethane, applied with a brush.
Here’s an aerial view:
The same techniques were used to create this inlet of Lake Erie:
…and as seen from above:
Negro Creek (southern Ontario) is close to “black water”, but uses the same dark grey/green. Surrounded by trees a
doctorwayne, your Maitland river has got to be the most realistic river I’ve seen modeled. The color is great. All the techniques for modeling “blue” water don’t come close to capturing a river as much as you did. Achieving that color is a technique that should be in a MR article much more than the standard “paint the bottom black and brown around the edges” technique. The cold latte brown you show is what the rivers I grew up with looked like when they were clearing up a few days after a rain. Right after, they were similar but much redder in color.
Thanks for your very kind assessment, jmbjmb. [:)]
There wasn’t much “technique” to choosing the colours: the brown is a “dirt” colour picked off a Walmart paint chart, and was used (as a wash, after thinning with water) for all of my basic landforms (plaster over screen). Before the colour was applied, the whole layout looked like it had been hit by a blizzard. [(-D] Here’s an area that’s not yet been sceniced but, mercifully, has been coloured:
The grey/green was also chosen as a scenery colour - mainly for background trees which were roughed-in using blocks of white upholstery foam. Some of it was dipped in the paint, but brush painting was more effective and more economical, too, and not so messy:
I also used the same colour to represent distant hills. These are simply Masonite, painted on the “rough” side, and dusted with some ground foam. Because this is a coved corner, it was easy to bend the sheet and slip it in behind the already-installed scenery - I had left a slight gap between the scenic plaster landforms and the wall, a rare example (for me) of planning ahead.
For the water, both colours were used unthinned.
I think that water (and scenery) colours are very subjective: pick what looks best to you - it helps to have a look at your prototype, of course - but try to really “see” that at which you’re looking. I think that I was fairly lucky, but I my sense of colour seems not too bad - it suits my tastes, at least. I don’t think t
Whoops! That looks like a glacier-fed lake in spring! Water can be that blue, but I don’t have a photo of it with a train…this is the closest I’ve got: http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=343654
Unless we are talking Carribian blues of the ocean, any other water I have seen is relatively NOT blue.
The river near me is a muddy shade of brown, Ponds have more of a greenish tint to them, even the small one I have under a waterfall in my front yard. I gave up trying to totally eliminate the algae, just eliminate enough so the pump for the waterfall works. How the dirt gets in there, I’ll never know, but that makes the bottom brownish too.
Lakes I have seen, on a bright sunny day driving past Lake Erie, it appeared blueish on the horizon far away, but up close, not so much. As mentioned probably a reflection of the sky on a clear sunny day.
From far away the Pacific ocean looks like a blue haze descending from the higher country of the middle of Oahu to the lower North side, but up close, not so much blue.
I would stick with a brownish-greenish base to be under the liquid water as in some of hte fine photos here.
I don’t have any real water on my layout, just a gullly with a underpass under the tracks. I used a greeenish-brownish base as gulllys tend to be muddy.
Just my thoughts and observations.
Thank you everybody for your thoughts, tips and suggestions.