Saturday 30 March 2013

The essence of moisture is wetness

I obtained a lot of useful feedback on my previous post about painting rivers. I made an executive decision to stay with green, and to get the essential river appearance via several coats of gloss varnish.

This is still a trial/ WIP, and the rivers still need their banks flocked and rocks picked out. Here are my four trial pieces:

Plain green

Lighter banks, subtle brown/ green middle

Lighter green streaks

Lighter banks, darker brown middle
I think that the combination of darker and lighter shades works best, but it does require a degree of artistry to achieve an aesthetically pleasing result.

I used two coats of gloss varnish, which isn't really apparent in the above pictures. Here they are all together, with some natural light reflections. The subtle differences between pieces aren't at all noticeable in these pictures. I also put in the GF9 bridge with some of the FSS roads.



Feedback welcomed!

Edit: See the final results here

11 comments:

  1. Great stuff Barks!

    I do my rivers the same way with the light and dark streak to give the impression of different depths. And I agree - varnish is a MUST on any water feature :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. That looks very good! Also mad props on the Zoolander reference :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. They look good. Look forward to seeing them all flocked.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Greetings. Nice modeling, Sir. I'm hoping that you do go for the dark middle water paint scheme. For me, the viewer of your art work, this method naturally leads my eyes from the bank down into the water then down to the bottom of the waterway where the bad-things live and hide.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A nice work! I agree with Jay: the aspect works fine.
    I suppose that it's enough for a wargame-table ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're right, Sam. Ideally, I'd have a full resin waterway where you can see the rocks on the bottom and little waterplants, but this is for gaming, not a model railway.

      Delete
  6. Looking very nice! Something wonderful on a wargame table, great work!
    Phil.

    ReplyDelete