Hi Marty,

 

the flu certainly hasn't effected your creative energies another mini masterpiece. looks great and blends in with the others very well.:thumbs

now ……. you only have a forest left to do.:lol:

 

cheers

 

toto

Hi Marty, sorry to hear of you and Traceys ills, hope your,e both feeling better soon!  When I first saw your photo with the modge podge wet I thought, silver birch, looks like I am going to have to find some rosemary bushes too :lol:, nice job mate, well done.

Cheers Pete. 

Excellent pine tree. :thumbs   'Marty's Miniture Magic' is an appropriate description of your N scale skills. :mrgreen:

Cheers, Gary.

Thanks Pete, Tom and Gary,

More of "Marty's Miniature Magic" Forest is underway …






Just the forerunners of the required army of trees.


Marty

The Waterfall

This is a project that has been ticking along in the background over the years and is now nearing completion. I've never made a waterfall before and it's been the usual combination of research, trial and error and just blind faith.


Not one to be hurried either, in particular the layers of varnish and Gelcoat but also the gradual build up of scenic elements that create the entire picture. Often it's been weeks of pondering the latest additions trying to imagine how they fit into the non-existent plan and considering the next step.


Apart from the bare base board frames and then polystyrene "snow covered" hill this is about the earliest view of the area I can find at the moment that clearly shows the concept of rock terraces for the falls on the right side of the photo below.







While not modelled after any particular falls and certainly not one around Pentrecourt Halt I have used an old post card from my mother's youth when she lived in Wales as a guide.

Over the next few posts I'm hoping to show some of the steps that I took to get where the falls are getting to in case it is of benefit to anyone else.

Cheers

Marty

Fantastic Marty,

Another scenic stunner on its way.

Cheers

Toto

The story of the hills and their construction occurs earlier in the topic somewhere but as a refresher and to provide a starting point for the falls, the hills are layered and carved blocks of polystyrene. A hard shell of "ground Gloop" (poly filler, PVA, water, Digger's burnt sienna oxide colouring and sawdust) soaked Chux (J-cloths) covers the polystyrene and a final layer of  "ground gloop" is terra formed into the landform required.

This technique gives a thin, light, sealed but robust shell to build scenery on. It's also incredibly messy… And gives a great deal of satisfaction :lol:


With the vegetation in the mill valley encroaching up the hillsides and surrounding the falls area it was clear that at some stage something about the falls just had to be done.







Most of the rock face had already been painted with acrylics, the upper sections though remained the "ground gloop" brown.

To start with a drizzle of 50/50 PVA/water mix was added to the top of the falls and let drain naturally down the rock face to determine where the flow ought to be.

In the picture below the glue mix is still wet in the ledge pools and milky. Even though I knew too thick a pour will result in slow, milky drying it was tricky to get enough to run down the falls and yet not fill the bottom pool too much. A small paint brush helped transfer excess back to the top again.






The shine of the dry PVA makes a convincing "wet" surface to me, as start anyway. On the left can be seen the beginnings of the tourist path to the falls and up to the top field.

Marty

Great modelling Marty, another bench mark scene!!

Cheers
Ron

following this with anticipation,,
:thumbs;-):cool:

Looking good so far Marty, lovely work. :thumbs More of this kind of 'magic' never goes astray ! ;-)

If the waterfall was to have falling water, ie off the rocks, I would recommend squirting/squeezing out several, very thin lines of PVA onto glass or similar and allowing to cure. When dry, use a scapel to lift one end and peel the thin strips up and off. Glue these to the top of the waterfall (the lip) with PVA and the bottom into the basin below. Fill the basin with normall thin applications of PVA.

Cheers, Gary.

Good to see you've been 'Glooping' again Marty, looks great :thumbs


Ed

Nice tip Gary, I'll need it for the culvert on the other side of the railway. This part of the project has now been finished today!

I persevered with the diluted PVA for a couple more layers but each time had the same problem with slow, milky drying if I let it get too deep and the bottom pool IS deep.

However, the structure of the water flow was starting to appear.






About then the decision was made to try an acrylic gloss medium/varnish.






Same deal with the varnish though, lots of lightly built up layers. An off white paint can be dry brushed to represent white water, thinking about where the white water would be in the falls. References to photos helped. Then more layers of varnish.





Further vegetation has been added starting with scissor cut lozenges glued with neat PVA and allowed to dry. Then teased out with tweezers, dripped with diluted PVA and covered with a light "blow" of the layout base scatter green. The commercial foliage I have is single colour and my preference is not to have blocks of single foliage unless is a prize winning lawn or planted crop.

The pools in the photo above are starting to fill.

More to come…
Marty

Looking fabulous Marty and what make are those reddish bits of foliage please?    They make a nice bit of relief from everything else.

Ken

that looks the doggies Marty, a great "how to "  :thumbs

cheers

   Matt

[user=34]Ken[/user] wrote:

Looking fabulous Marty and what make are those reddish bits of foliage please?    They make a nice bit of relief from everything else.

Ken

Hello Ken,

The foliage is Heki-flor, either 1557-1567 Autumn Brown or 1558-1568 Autumn Red, I suspect it's the brown.

Best foliage I've found so far, they obviously do greens.

cheers

Marty

Over the weeks I'd add a light layer of varnish every now and then, in between soldering the dropper wires for Llandyfriog Junction or heading out for work in the morning… but boy was it painstakingly slow to build up the ledge pools… Time to get out the serious toys.






This two pack furniture protecting glass coat is my preferred medium for making water and was used on the Pentrecourt Diorama.

For this waterfall only a small amount was going to be needed and care would be needed to get the quantities matched.
This stuff dries perfectly clear, sets rock hard, can be tinted with acrylics, finds it's way level, needs poking at the edges with a cocktail stick to break the meniscus and flow around rocks, rushes etc. If left to it's own devices it will dry flat like a sheet of glass. It can, with care during the late stages of drying be "formed" slightly… more experimentation is required though.

Mixed into a disposable pot it was again poured carefully using a disposable BBQ skewer as a pouring guide balanced on the lip of the pot onto the top of the waterfall and allowed to run down.







You can see in the photo below that the pools are now suitably filled… almost to overflowing in the bottom pool (small panics and mental running around in circles, getting glass coat on the track was not going to be pretty).






While it was left to dry I went to put the glass coat away, but then the river around the Mill WAS ready for it's first coat of Gel coat anyway… wasn't it? Yeah, life's too short… go for it…




Ooooh yeah…. it needs a couple more layers to the top of, and overflowing, the weir but that's a good start.

I do want to "texture" the water to show a strong flow with eddies around rocks and bridge abutments with the requisite white water over and beyond the weir too, but that'll be later on I'm thinking.

The waterfall needed finishing first.

More to come….

Marty

Looking the antz pantz Marty ! the last pix is so real...

you have the water method sussed Marty,looks fab,as Sol said real,
:thumbs:thumbs;-):cool:

Thanks for all this, Marty.  It's helping me with my deliberations on Port Elderley.

Thanks lads,

I'm pretty chuffed with it so far…

I'll go into the river in a bit more detail for you Max. There are a couple of things I want to try out that might be of interest.

cheers

Marty