The tiles I used for this project are Field Stone tiles of 1,5”. I scraped the stone structure away there where the river has to be. I started to make a set of tiles with a stream as wide as possible. (about 1”) After that I also made some narrow streams that I could use to suggest that the large stream is fed by these minor streams. A possible source of this river are the wells I made.
After removing the stone structure I had to make a certain structure to suggest that there is some stream running between the fieldstones.
I used Dash clay, a self hardener clay to model a stream of some kind. I made the clay very wet and used a small knife to model the stream.
I just started without having a certain structure in mind so after a while I ended up with a strange pattern that gave me the idea of a
lava kind of stream.
The wells were also made by using a knife. I pushed the clay from the outside to the inside forming a kind of pillar in the middle where in another
example I simply made a stirring movement with the knife In order to get a whirlpool effect.
In all the tiles look nice but I am not completely satisfied. I painted the originals to see how it looks. Since I got this feeling that the stream had to
be lave I used red and yellow colors for it.
It also looks as if this modelled stream is on top of the tile rather than flowing into the tile between the stones. Although there are reasons to
improve them I did make a mold out of hem since I had some left over sillicone while doing other molds. (The purple plaster is "Violetstone", a Dental plaster
Class IV 340n/mm2)
The second attempt:
The second attempt on making a dungeon river asked for a different approach.
Firstly I decided that the river had to run deeper into the tile and more between the fieldstone edges of this river.
Secondly the river structure itself had to look more like actual water.
Instead of scraping the fieldstone structure from the tile I cut the stones into parts and use the stones that form the sides of the river by gluing
them onto another stone of 1,5”.
Now I have a series of stones that are twice as thick as the first series (1/2”) and have a ¼” deep
Gap where I can model the river in.
Again I used wet clay and now I used the round tip of the back of a brush to model the clay. I pushed the tip of the brush in a certain angle into the
clay forming a small wave kind of pattern.
The river is sculpted with the idea of a more gentle stream although the wells are still vibrant.
If I should decide to mold this series of stones I also have to downsize them again to ¼” thick tiles.
This can be done by simply gluing small stones of ¼” thick around these stones.
If I will mold it I will also explain this by adding pictures.
I painted this test to see how it would look. I did not make a mold yet because I want to do another run.
The paints I used on the second attempt can be found on the picture below.
I used the four colours on the left for the stream. The three colours on the right were used for the tiles.
In the pictures below you can also see how the colours look when a picture is taken in sunlight and when it is taken in the shadow.
More interesting is the picture where both attempts are lined up side by side (third picture from the right. Now you can compare the two streams.
They have the same basic form but look completely different.
I guess it is a matter of taste what you like better.
To be continued………
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