Glen McGuire
-
Posts
1,691 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Glen McGuire
-
Sorry for the delay in responses. Back in town now and ready to get this thing going again. Thanks, Pat. That is definitely the look I'm trying to simulate. What I've done just looks a little too cloudy to me. But I might be being too picky. I'm going to play around with some other ideas (like @Javelin suggests with the acrylic gel) and see if it looks better. If not, I'll go back to the original. Hey Ken, what is the "shiny fluffy fabric stuff" you used?- 174 replies
-
- 4
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Time to dive into the water effects, which will probably make or break the project. After going thru a bunch of youtube videos on how to make waterfall dioramas, I finally settled on a hybrid technique that I think will work - caulk and cotton. I took some caulk that comes out white but dries clear and laid down a number of beads on wax paper and a glass plate (I could not get it off the wax paper later, so glass is the way to go). Next, I unfurled some cotton from the ends of q-tips. I like q-tips because the cotton is wound around the ends and you can get nice strings which work well for a stream of water like a waterfall. While the caulk was still tacky, I gently pressed the stringy cotton onto the caulk strips. Next, I took some diluted white glue and dabbed drops of it onto the cotton with a paint brush. It was a bit tricky to do this without pulling the cotton strings off the caulk. While the waterfall strips were drying, I worked on the base layer of colors for the waterfall pool. The waterfall pool in the first pic below has the color shades I was trying to mirror. The 2nd pic is what I was able to do after several days of trying, failing, and trying again. The final result is varying mixes of green, yellow, and 3 different shades of blue. I will add a layer of clear epoxy resin (maybe a slight tint) for 3D depth and then some mild ripple effects on top. Finally, I had to take a preliminary look to see if I was heading in the right direction or way off track. So I placed a few of the waterfall strips on the rock and got a rough sneak preview. I'm not sure how happy I am with the opaqueness of the caulk. I think it would look better if it was clearer and you could see thru it to the rock in the gaps between cotton strands. However, to the naked eye, it looks a lot better than this up close picture. So I may play around with that some more. Regardless, it'll have to wait as I'm fixing to head out of town for a couple of weeks.
- 174 replies
-
- 12
-
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
I stared at the dang picture for 5 minutes and could not see what you are talking about. Looks really good to me. Regarding your carving skills on Buono/Rustico, now I am the one that is "gobsmacked"!!
-
More progress on the wall… To me, one of the great beauties of nature is its randomness. Related to this project, it’s the cascade of a waterfall, the ripples in the pool, the cracks in the rocky wall, and the variations of color in the same rock. For someone like me, who tends to think in straight lines, right angles and basic colors, it’s a challenge trying to recreate the randomness. But nature is also subtle, so you don’t want to go overboard with the randomness and end up with something that looks like kindergarten finger painting. With that said, it's taken me a while to get satisfied with my initial painting of the rock wall. I started with a base layer of slate gray, then brushed some darker tones in places, then ran a light white-ish wash over certain areas, then finger-smudged some different gray tints around a few other places. I think I ended up with a fairly realistic coloring. Of course, much of what I’ve done will be hidden with the waterfall itself, moss, and surrounding greenery, but I think you’ve got to get the base layer right for a good foundation.
- 174 replies
-
- 15
-
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Boring update here - prep work for painting. The first step was using modeling clay to fill in a bunch of the gaps and then brushing a layer of Gesso over everything. I left more visible cracks under the main channel of water for a bit of contrast. We'll see how that looks when I paint the rocks their final gray. For the sides and back of the wall, I covered the areas with a thin layer of modeling clay and textured/contoured it a bit. The idea was to make it look like a cross-section of a large rock wall without all the cracks and sharp edges that the exposed face has.
- 174 replies
-
- 12
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Welcome to MSW! I'd love to see a lego build like you describe. I hope you will do a build log here when you start your project.
-
Agree with jpalmer - impressive work with a very tedious process.
- 559 replies
-
- 2
-
-
-
- vanguard models
- alert
- (and 2 more)
-
I agree with your stepdaughter, it does look very nice. And, you did such a marvelous job making the brace and making it fit. But at the end of the day, it's your decision and either way I don't think you can go wrong since you do have a mosaic prominently showing the brace.
-
I like the way the middle 2 boards on the left look if you can replicate that on all of them - it's not too much and not too little weathering. I think the black on the far right board is too much. The board on the left is not bad, just maybe a little too dark. I like the way the railings look on that same pic. My 2 cents.
-
Thanks, Bryan and Pat. I'd say there's a fine line between excitement and adventure vs abject panic!! Thanks, Steven. Still got a long ways to go though - filling in the gaps around the rocks, doing the sides of the wall (still pondering that one), painting the rocks, adding greenery, painting the base, adding the pool water, and finally the waterfall water. I think that's the proper sequence. Thanks, Keith. Yes, I'm going to paint the rocks grayish, in similar fashion as that test piece.
- 174 replies
-
- 7
-
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Work begins on the real waterfall. I bought some foam blocks for floral arrangements, glued a couple together, and cut them to fit my base. I affixed a couple of bamboo skewers to the base which will pierce the foam giving it some extra stability when I load it up with rocks. The next step was cutting the foam to the basic shape of the waterfall's wall. You can also see my large assortment of rocks to choose from as I build the wall. I started affixing rocks at the top with the rock heating/foam melting process I used for my test. Unfortunately, I got off to a rocky start (sorry about that 😁) with the very first piece. It was a bigger than my test pieces so I decided to use a propane torch instead of the butane torch I used for the test. Bad move! When I heated up the rock and placed it on top of the foam, it started sizzling and sinking really fast. I realized it was about to cause a mini China Syndrome and melt all the way thru my carefully shaped foam, so I grabbed it quickly and went back to the butane torch. More progress... And here's the face of the wall complete. At least for now anyway. It's got some ridges that are more noticeable in person than picture, but I'll let it sit overnight and take another look in the morning to see if I want to make them more prominent. I also tried to visualize the flow of the water down the rocks as I was piecing it together, but I found that's a lot harder than I thought. Hard to see the forest when you're working on each tree. So again, I need to step back, let my brain refocus, and look at it with fresh eyes. Viewing from the top, you can see I left 2 small channels on each side of the main channel in the middle. I might have a couple of small ribbons trickling down paths from there. Maybe.
- 174 replies
-
- 15
-
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Looking good, Ian. I think your color scheme will really bring it to life.
- 536 replies
-
- 2
-
-
-
- Quadrireme
- radio
- (and 1 more)
-
I think you are right, Ken. Penguins AND icicles in a Hawaiian waterfall? So much for global warming!! 😄 Happy New Year to you too, Keith!
- 174 replies
-
- 5
-
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Hey Javelin, are you talking about something like these circled below? Or can you find a picture of what you have in mind?
- 174 replies
-
- 6
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Thank you, KG! I appreciate your confidence and encouragement! You know, when you put it like that, it should be really hard for me to mess this one up, shouldn't it! 😃
- 174 replies
-
- 7
-
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
Thanks, Bob. Always good to get confirmation that someone else sees the same thing I do! Thanks, Keith. Funny you say that. A friend was over yesterday and asked "why do you have a big rock on your kitchen counter?" 😃
- 174 replies
-
- 6
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
-
I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and got to spend a lot of time with family and friends. I've been watching a bunch of youtube videos trying to figure out how to approach the second half of this project, which is making the rock wall and waterfall. In between videos, I decided to go ahead and make the base so I could at least feel like I was getting something done. Nothing too elaborate. It's 14" wide by 9" deep with the front beveled for a nameplate. I added a 3/16" rim around the perimeter which will hold in the epoxy resin that makes up the waterfall pool. On to the rock wall. From the youtube videos, I got several ideas for how to make the wall, like stacking polystyrene and scoring with a knife, wadding up newspaper and covering with plaster of paris, making rock molds and casting rocks, or even buying plastic rocks and pushing them into modeling clay. I did some trial and error on a few of these methods which ended up being a lot more error than trial. I just could not get anything to look like I wanted. The video using cast rocks from rock molds seemed to give the best look for my purposes. I was about to pursue that route when I thought why not use real rocks instead of fake ones? There are places at my ranch that have these thin, flat reddish rocks with good texture (no idea what kind of rocks they actually are). So on my next trip out there, I gathered up a few handfuls to try them out. I decided to use some packing foam for the basic shape of my rock wall. I took a small piece of foam and a few rocks to test things out. As you can see, it was kind of like putting a puzzle together. But the next question was how to adhere to the rocks to the foam. Because some of the best looking rocks did not have a real flat or smooth surface, I did not think gluing them on would be very secure. So I decided to try something a little different - melting them on. I took a small butane torch, heated the back of the rock, then pressed it into the foam. This actually worked great because it allowed me to push rocks into the foam at different depths so I could make the outer surface as smooth or blocky as necessary. I tested the melting method on one of the rocks and it adhered to the foam quite securely. So I continued with melting the rest of the rocks onto my test piece. Next, I mixed up a small amount of plaster and filled in the gaps. After that, I put a thin layer of gesso over the whole thing to seal it for painting. And finally, I mixed up some gray and white paint with plenty of water to make a thin wash. I covered the rocks with the wash, then added some darker grays in places for shading. Here's how the final test piece came out. The second pic is the basic color and rock texture I was trying to match. I think my coloring is not too bad. But I think I need to have a few more sharp edges on areas of the wall to give it more of a blocky look like in the picture. For a test run, however, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
- 174 replies
-
- 13
-
-
-
- Waa Kaulua
- bottle
- (and 1 more)
Our Emblem ®
