Pouring and Coloring Water

The Greeley Freight Station Museum and the Oregon, California & Eastern model railroad boasts five lakes, four rivers, and two log ponds. When the modelers are working with water, it sometimes takes three or four people to coordinate their efforts, especially when modeling a river with some length. There are many ways of doing water, but in this video, they will just demonstrate one method. However, each of the techniques are a little bit different; because they have five lakes, they have understandably become pretty adept at modeling water.

For materials, they use Liquitex, which is a retarder that allows David to mix the paint. The three colors they chose in this particular set depict clear river areas well. To begin, he pours some Aqua Blue onto a piece of paper, adding about four drops of retarder, and mixes it to keep the paint from setting. Next is Windsor Blue, the main base color for the clear river, and a bit of Mars Black. Then he begins applying the paint to the river mock-up, painting the lighter colors on the edges and darker towards the center and leaving gaps in between the colors.

The next step is to blend the colors together. To achieve this, David dabs between each color, moving back and forth with a brush. The next step is to add the Envirotex Lite polymer coating resin and hardener. They also use three particular Castin’ Craft colors for the river, the standard brown, the watery blue, and the green. He goes on to demonstrate how to pour.

Watch more from Allen Keller’s Great Model Railroad series.