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Hey guys,

for those who dabble in terrain making:
what do you use for water? I have heard PVA glue let dry makes good water.
On the other hand i have heard that resin itself makes for good water.

IYHO what is the best method to recreate water either in a still pond or a active flowing river?

Thanks for reading

Vallejo Still Water for slow moving bodies of water, lakes, ponds, swamps...

The Vallejo gell water effects work well for flowing rivers.

I would caution against pva glue, becuase it doesnt actually dry clear.

I hear it goes milky after a while also it shrinks.

I also heard somewhere that Woodlands Scenics Realistic Water is nice as well.

I used acrylic gel medium from my local art shop to make the water for my battleship base as seen in this thread:http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/399127.page#3358939

Note that it doesn't look very clear, this is because it's a thin layer applied over paint, and in turn painted over in some areas (the froth in the aft-wake is green stuff). It can be made as smooth or choppy as is desired.

For a very still and translucent effect then purpose-made water effect may be preferable.

I have used epoxy for water before, but beware with age it will turn yellow. But this can be used to your benefit if you are doing stagnate/stained water.

Depending how deep you want it just use the GW water effects or similar products from other companies for shallow water. For deeper water clear resin or the woodland scenics water pellets. Resin is a little more difficult to work with but you can get dyes made strictly for resins to color it. IMO resin when applied properly looks the best for "deeper" still bodies of water. plus its really durable

You may want to check this out. I can see it being decent for water effects as well as ice.

For hobby purposes I'd recommend the Vallejo Water Effects, as they are easy to work with and come in many different shades.

I use Woodland Scenics, it is pretty much just the same as GWs stuff, just cheaper. Although watch out, it does have a habit of shrinking and cracking. Also I would be careful as, even though it looks solid, it takes a few days to dry. If you leave something on it for more than an hour, it will begin to sink in. And I find dusting it helps for the first few days.


Although tjis dry hard resin stuff is amazing. What I did was I painted it onto a base, gave it a few layers. Then before it dried, I took a very blunt knife and cut cracks in it, wiggling the knife to thicken them. Then paint it and you have an ice base.

Check out this guys tutorial - he uses a pour on resin and it looks pretty good. The rest of that series of tutorials for terrain boards are pretty cool too.
Edit: forgot to give link
http://www.quindia.com/studioart42.htm

For my Necron themed ROBB, for the skull pitz, I'm filling them in with clear resin tinted green.

If you're looking to make water on your terrain, look into Plastruct's line of styrene sheets of water. I just found them the other day at my local hobby shop. They come in a variety of water qualities (choppy, still, stormy) and are clear, so they can be tinted from beneath. And they would be a million times less messy than water effects.

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:If you're looking to make water on your terrain, look into Plastruct's line of styrene sheets of water. I just found them the other day at my local hobby shop. They come in a variety of water qualities (choppy, still, stormy) and are clear, so they can be tinted from beneath. And they would be a million times less messy than water effects.

... I didn't know this stuff existed. I am totes going to use this for other projects in the works. Thanks!

http://www.plastruct.com/Pages/OnlineProductDetail.lasso?-op=%27eq%27&CCode=WPSC-208

Obviously, the pictures on the internet won't be nearly as good as the actual product, but it will give you the product number as reference.