beck / strean

Model your stream without water. Put all your junk, pollutants and weeds in the "stream". Use a piece of clear plastic packaging (such as may be used to pack soft fruit) cut to shape as your "water". Go over with a couple of coats of brownish varnish and things to represent weeds, rubbish, etc.

Hope this helps.

PhilD

I would build a very small diarama to test the techniques.

The Black Beck in leeds was just that - almost black - in the industrial era. You could model that as a flat surface painted with black enamel , to give the right sort of reflectivity, then take some of the colour off with a couple of thin washes og brownish and greenish varnish in streaks,

Fast flowing sreams fed from loamy areas are brown and not at all transparent - again I would not expect to be able to see through the surface.

I am not at all convinced by clear water on models. Go and look at a few real-like ponds and streams from up a hill (scaling the eyeheight your model is seen from). You won't be able to see into them at all.

On 30/08/2011 2:29 AM, bobharvey wrote: [...]

I agree. Modelling water is made more complex than needed by our tendency to model what we think it should look like than what it actually looks like.

This tendency also shows up in modelling trees (most tree bark is not brown), roads (which weather to surprisingly light greys in a very short time), lawns (which are not billiard-table green), brick walls (mortar is almost never white), concrete (which usually has a yellowish cast), and so on.

The best guide to modelling the scene is a good collection of photographs, taken under the lighting/weather conditions you imagine for your layout. Some of these can be used in the backscene, which helps achieve that consistency of colouring that produces realism.

Time of day and weather affect the perception of colour. Achieving a colour scheme that looks realistic is not easy. I've tried a number of techniques, and have come to the conclusion that consistency in overall tone or mood is more important than precise prototypical accuracy. So I'm (very slowly) puttering at (re-)painting models, including the rolling stock.

HTH Wolf K.

However, the *perception* of the model is also affected by our tendency to compare it to what we would *expect* to see.

Small bodies of water, including moving water, of the order of a few cm wide and deep are generally transparent to a certain degree*. Therefore, given that the model of the water is a few cm wide/deep we expect it to be partially transparent even if we "know" that it's representing something tens of feet wide and deep which, when we come across it in real life, we're not at all surprised to find is opaque.

As does distance.

• when they're opaque, we call them mud or foam, not water :-)

Bu**er, replied to the sender instead of the group, again, never used to. Is it me or has outlook changed ? Maybe time to switch ....

Not sure what you are trying to say in your reply, could you try again ?

Agree with Wolf, the overall impression is far more important than the detail. Too often when building a model we focus on the detail of the current activity instead of its part in creating the overall picture - wood and trees perhaps.

Cheers, Simon

You mean Outlook Express I presume. I believe it has now be re-incarnated as Windows Live Mail. From what I have heard on many other groups you are not alone in replying to sender rather than the group. Seems Microsoft have yet again tried fixing something that was not broken.

Thats it then, it will follow Office out of the door. Am fairly tolerant of software quirks and often slow to change but found Office unusable in the latest versions so it got replaced - not just on cost grounds - now its bye bye Live Mail.

Thanks, Simon

Microsoft's mistake was in trying to combine a mail program with a newsreader. It has caused untold anguish.

Your model of a river is only a few cm wide and a few cm deep. People expect it to be just as transparent or opaque as real water a few cm wide and deep - ie, to be transparent. That they "know" that it's a model representing something much bigger doesn't seem to matter. If it's opaque like the big river it represents is opaque, then it'll look like mud, not water.

If you look at my headers you'll see that combining the two works Just Fine. In fact, I find that it works far better than using two separate programs. It's combining them *incompetently* that screws things up.

Unless you're really running on a LEO I, I'm not sure your headers are entirely accurate :)

Nick

I agree. I use Turnpike, which combines a mail client and a newsreader quite seamlessly, and has done since the first version I used in the early 90s.

David

Exactly what happened to live mail. Used it and or outlook for many years without problem, but theyve moved the Reply Group tab off right click drop down menu. My fingers knew about that tab, now brain needs to - thats the incompetence in this instance.

With office they made it snazzy and in doing so used lots more of the screen for menus and it took me ages to find what were frequently used functions - some of which never did locate. Thats why gone to open version and staying there.

My latest pet hate is programs that go and find things for you at start up. Trouble is they all run as though theyre the only program on the system. Once did network trace to see why everything so slow at start. Seems HP is searching the world for printers. Bet they thought it was great that they could locate a printer half way round the world. However, like most people I have one a few feet away that changes parametetrs once in a blue moon.

As for updates, do I need everything to check every time system starts up in case theres a latest binary with another obscure feature....

rant...rant.

Cheers, Simon

What about them being a cruel race (according to Mr Bean) theyre operas can be 6 hours long and they have no word for fluffy !

Not sure can agree with that, some streams and certainly most rivers look opaque from quite a short distance away. If its deep then perhaps clear to opaque via translucent is what you want. So to give an impression of depth use clear varnish at the top but becoming a dark dirty green or ... lower down. With streams the type of bottom is very important - do that first. Would try thin layers of satin so get some reflection and some not - something to experiment with. Also depends on the viewing angle as well as the amount of light. If it was a night scene then how about the effect shown by those cards where tilt and gives a different picture. One angle for the moon, another for starts or cloudy sky ....

Cheers, Simon

The "Mutt/1.5.9i" bit is :-)

Not if they're only a few cm wide or deep they don't, unless covered in foam.

I am going to be really controversial now. The mortar joints in a well-pointed brick wall are less than an eighth of an inch deep, and less than half an inch wide. Flat brick paper gives a far more accurate model than scribed or embossed (impressed?) textured brick materials, when seen from a scale viewing distance. Slate roofs should be all but flat (not pantiles). The window reveals on Little Bytham station are half a brick deep. That is less than 4 cm, which is half a mm or so in HO. The glass should be almost flush with the brick wall. (I think scratch-built models are better in this regard than kits and certainly better than hornby solid plastic lumps). Painted on glazing bars are just about to scale, with care. Bricks which close up appear of highly variable colours of red, brown, and almost black, merge into a single texture from a distance. To model thatch correctly to scale you should probably use horsehair!

I don't want to stop people building up dry stone walls a block at a time, or tiling roofs with separate strips. It is fun, and satisfying, and gives a texture to the building that makes the model more interesting. In a historic context it makes available to the viewer an impression of the materials used, as they would appear close up. I'm just saying that if P4 track geometry matters, they should probably be using much smaller grains for the ballast, like grey sand.

But then, I was once known to combine an Airfix Pug with left over streamlining from the same company's bullied pacifics, and make a West Country shunter. The hobby should not be proscriptive.

Are you getting your units mixed up. Talking about real rivers - rare are those that are a few cm wide or deep. Streams can be of that depth though. However with the shallow part of rivers and shallow streams then as previously said it depends on the bottom. If its a muddy bottom then it depends on the light .... Plus if theres nothing to see (no reeds, fish, stones etc) then clear water can appear opaque/translucent - depends on the bottom and the light.

Cheers, Simon

I am going to be really controversial now. The mortar joints in a well-pointed brick wall are less than an eighth of an inch deep, and less than half an inch wide. Flat brick paper gives a far more accurate model than scribed or embossed (impressed?) textured brick materials, when seen from a scale viewing distance. Slate roofs should be all but flat (not pantiles). The window reveals on Little Bytham station are half a brick deep. That is less than 4 cm, which is half a mm or so in HO. The glass should be almost flush with the brick wall. (I think scratch-built models are better in this regard than kits and certainly better than hornby solid plastic lumps). Painted on glazing bars are just about to scale, with care. Bricks which close up appear of highly variable colours of red, brown, and almost black, merge into a single texture from a distance. To model thatch correctly to scale you should probably use horsehair!

I don't want to stop people building up dry stone walls a block at a time, or tiling roofs with separate strips. It is fun, and satisfying, and gives a texture to the building that makes the model more interesting. In a historic context it makes available to the viewer an impression of the materials used, as they would appear close up. I'm just saying that if P4 track geometry matters, they should probably be using much smaller grains for the ballast, like grey sand.

But then, I was once known to combine an Airfix Pug with left over streamlining from the same company's bullied pacifics, and make a West Country shunter. The hobby should not be proscriptive.

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But if your scribed lines are nearly filled with paint then the minor relief left can look better than flat paper. Plus the scribe lines put the mortar colour in the correct place.

As for ballast, it depends on the stone size. If they are 3 in average diameter then should be represented by 1mm grains in P4. Most sand a bit small for that, plus theres granite and theres granite (even true granites). Shap granite is red or pink but others are mostly white with varying amounts of black specks. Biggest problem is if you use real granite is its grain size is often greater than 1mm, so with crystals of quartz, felspar and mica etc individual grains of a single mineral will be too big for a single rock and their colour incorrect. Perhaps should go for a fine grained version of granite - oh dear have forgotten what it should be but could guess at rhyolite or a microgranite :-)

Cheers, Simon