In this section of making our modular rivers we will be going through the process of basecoat painting and flocking which gives much of the character and color to the river pieces.
Before flocking, I selected 3 straight pieces and created small stones out of scrap foam core peeled away and shaped down to resemble stones.
We used the GW Beastial Brown to put a base coat down on each individual piece. Now, we obviously didn’t take a tiny little pot of super expensive GW/Citadel paint, but rather have a local paint shop make more of it for us. Most local hardware stores, for a small fee, will match colors and create larger quantities of latex paint for you. For me, this meant painting a stripe of brown on a piece of paper and taking it to the hardware store and spending $7 on a quart of paint. I’ve since done this with the very common color’s that we use when making terrain.
When applying flock, cheap white glue from your local store is perfectly fine, the catch is, buy lots when flocking large projects. Running out of glue during this portion is always a pain and could affect the quality of your projects.
The first layer of flock that we put down is a custom mixture that was basically left overs from other projects. We used the following types of flock, medium black, large black, medium brown, medium grey, large brown. We use Woodland Scenics flocks because they are readily available, are color consistent (at least over the past 7-8 years they have been) and to me are worth the cost based on convenience. There are plenty of other methods to making flock, and I have mostly avoided them based on the time involved with creating the flock itself, that doesn’t mean they are bad, they just mean I’m lazy and would rather buy pre-made stuff!
The next layer of flock was a light brown to be our sandy/muddy banks. This was put on after the first layer of flock was dry.
The next layer was the grassy mix that we’ve used on many items for years. It’s 90% medium green and 10% medium brown, this shows through ever so lightly and breaks up the otherwise solid green color. This layer was put down while the previous brown layer was still a bit wet. This was done so that a tiny amount of the green would stick to it. If I can get a picture of this, I will post it in the next article for sure.
In the next article you will see the completion of the river with some final painting, flocking, and of course, the water!
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