Sunday, February 17, 2019

'Water Feature' from PaulSS: Tales of the River Bank


I recently received two packs of the Gale Force 9 rivers so when this bonus round came up I thought it would be a great opportunity to get them ready for my battlefield.

When you get them they are pretty bland, the banks are brown with a dry-brush and the water is very blue with a light blue highlight and then gloss varnished, all in all pretty uninspiring.



I started off by washing the water with successive layers of grey, brown and green to get rid of the 'of course rivers are blue' look. In retrospective I think I could have gone even further with this. 

The next step was to add some texture, the original surface of the water was done in a finish of high gloss varnish, which looked OK but was a bit flat. I went to town adding a couple of layers of Liquitex Gloss Gel to add some texture. I left it all to dry over the weekend making sure it was packed away to keep dust off the Liquitex while it cured.


It was now time to make a start on the banks, the kit is delivered with a couple of packs of static grass, but I wanted more texture than that, so started off by sticking on a few chunks of cork bark, lots of tufts, some Woodland Scenics clump foliage then finally adding small patches of static grass with a Noch puffer bottle.

The final step was to build a small bridge. The main components were scrap balsa for the main joists, coffee stirrers for the planking and 1/8" dowel for the rails. The ramps were made of some scrap polystyrene covered in PVA glue and textured with sand and grit. 


I do like how it came out and I now have about six foot of river and a bridge for my games. Not sure how the points shall work for this though, the river would probably be about one and a half 6" cubes and add another half cube for the bridge, 40pts?


And for those of you whose memory was jogged by the title:





16 comments:

  1. Great looking bridge and nice meandering river sections
    Best Iain

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  2. Nice work on this water feature, Paul!

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  3. Great work Paul! I have a load of these river sections as well and need to pimp them out like this. Also, if possible, send me the link to that YouTube video as the link was stripped in the transfer.

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  4. Cheers Curt, here is that link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIhbAkwVT_A

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  5. Great final result. I need to get some rivers myself and this is providing inspiration, along with the following Mill project.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you.

      Frustratingly it looks like the 'straight bits' are no longer made else I would pick some more up too.

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