When I first glanced at how the bank looks in that last picture, the first thing that came to mind was kudzu! Really looks great so far Allen!
Many, many long years ago, I found myself residing not too far south of Shreveport. From what I can vaguely recall, this looks right to me. You just need some red mud to depict the aftermath of a good rain...
Thank you! I hadn't planned on making it look like Kudzu in this scene, but I could do that? It does kind of look like Kudzu though. I have a place on the layout where I do want to apply a lot of kudzu. It's between Ruston and Winnfield on the southern end of the layout, basically where the farm scene is. It'll be the perfect place for it. One thing I need to look into, which is why I didn't finish that section yet, I need to figure out what color of green to use. From mages that I've seen in the past, Kudzu is kind of bright green and pretty much solid throughout. Also kind of scared to start in with it, as it might take over the entire layout?
Thanks BC. Funny you mention the red mud after a good rain. When I first starting working on this river scene recently, I found some images on Google Maps of the Ouachita river, it looked almost orange, just like you said, after a good rain. But a buddy said it might stand out too much and distract from the scene if I made the river that color, might be too much of a contrast? So I think I'm going to shoot for a greenish brown.
The War Eagle river wraps around two sides of my grandfather's farm (now my cousins') in the Ozarks of NW AR. Generally the only time it is that saturated with red-dirt mud is when it is at flood stage. If it's still (or again) within the banks, it's more of a tan color, to it's normal greenish/blue color, depending on the season. Pictures of the river before widespread heavy fertilizer use were more blue. That may or may not be the same in southern AR.
My next project was to paint the riverbed. I toyed with a lot of ideas and wasn't happy with any of the options I looked into. Then I remembered watching one of Boomer's videos and how he painted his. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch, while it's kind of long and rambling, like most of his are, it's chocked full of good info. The first thing I did was to paint the river using Tamiya's XF-58 Olive Green. It goes on kind of bright green, but darkens as it dries. This is only the first coat. Next I wanted to give a shallow water look near the sand bar so I watered down some tan colored craft paint so I could do as Boomer did and tried stain painting it on, but when it dried, I wasn't happy with it. It came out too blotchy because I think the pigments weren't as fine as good hobby paints are. So I repainted that section with the Tamiya Olive and redid it using Tamiya XF-52 Flat Earth. I tried something a little different and painted it on full strength and did the same with the Tamiya XF-58 Olive, then I blended them together. This worked much better. Most of this might be somewhat covered when I start faux painting the main river, but I know it'll be there.
You did a great job blending the olive and earth colors. The transition from earth to green looks natural.
