River Banks

 When I visited Devon last summer I got some pictures of the river Dart at Hexworthy. 

My model can only include the riverbank, and the very edge of the river, which means capturing the feel of this place will be a challenge. The river banks are a challenge in themselves, consisting mainly of large boulders. 

Some of those boulders are pretty huge - the size of a car - while others are small. While some are rounded, some are quite angular.

A while back (actually nearly a year ago!) I cast boulders in plaster using a Woodland Scenics mould. The castings look great, but are somewhat regular in size and roundness. 

So I made my own boulders from DAS clay. These are not so much sculpted as carved, like chunks of cheese, keeping an angular appearance hopefully reminiscent of the large angular blocks seen in the photos above. The DAS blocks were cut to sit on the riverbanks but give the impression of being embedded in them, but the cast plaster boulders were set into the riverbank by cutting recesses into the scenery. 

As well as the riverbank along the front of the layout, I lined the stream with (slightly smaller) boulders.

Rocks and boulders come in a range of sizes though, so smaller ones are needed. These were added from a pack of Woodland Scenics "Coarse Talus" - I've no idea what that is supposed to be, other than small rocks. 

These were added around the larger rocks, hopefully in a random and natural way. I think the mix of sizes and shapes is quite effective, but of course the colours are not - cream colour clay, grey plaster (I'd added paint to the mix), and brown rock.

Out with the paints then. I started with a grey over the clay and plaster rocks, with a thin wash over the Talus rocks. I then stippled on a dry brush of a pinkish-grey shade, and of a yellow. Actually, the painting process took a few rounds of washes and dry brushing, and finally a dusting of talcum powder over the damp paint. 

The colours are now more unified, but keep some variation, and the Talus and plaster casts keep their texture. I've also mixed up some more tile grout and back-filled the banks up to the back of the boulders to set them in. In due course grass and undergrowth will come right down to and overhanging the boulders. 

The smaller stones in the bed of the river and stream are from another Woodland Scenics bag, of fine Talus. These have also been given a thin wash of grey paint but don't seem to have taken it as well as the larger rocks, though it has toned down and darkened them. 

There may be more I can add to the rocks to represent the lichen and moss seen on them. I now also need to think about how to model the water. My options are:

• Use a commercial water product - but I've no experience of these, and the river is very shallow with a low lip at the baseboard edge - I'm not sure how well it would be contained
• Use gloss modge podge as I did for Loctern Quay - while this worked well for a painted "water" surface, any depth would take a lot of coats and I don't know how well it would dry if put on too thick
• Given the colour of the water in the photos above, good old yacht varnish might be a good bet. I used this on a layout I built in my teens, the main problem was it creeping up the banks which didn't look great.