"Moveable Creek Water Feature" Topic

I have taken my river design and reduced the size to a 2" wide version to form a creek, instead of the 4" wide stream that I had worked up. The goal is a water way that can be laid out on a game matt or table, then rolled up for storage or stored flat depending on space limitations.
Materials used: Masking tape, Brushable Kel Seal caulking in a tub, clear silicone sealer in a tube, a bit of blue and green paint.

link

my link has step by step "how to" pictures and narrative, shot version is lightly putting the tape down on a work surface to hold it in place, cut pieces and overlay them to get the curves. Apply thin coats of the brushable caulking (any brand will do). Gently peel up the tape when caulk is dry, flip over and a couple of finish coats. Apply color wash of your desire. When fully dry I applied a line of clear silicone along the middle of the creek and used my finger to smear it over the entire piece. WARNING, the clear coat will DARKEN the color coat!!! The silicon gave the piece a definet "wet" look, very glossy indeed.

Pretty cool effect. Thanks for sharing.

I try to avoid painting creeks and rivers blue now. They may that color on maps and globes, but in the real world they vary with them appearing to be mostly greens, browns and even black in color.

let's take a look at examples shall we?

Rhine River: picture
Kind of gray-green. It's important to give it a little texture and have it shiny/reflective.

Potomac River:
picture
Green with white rapids and rocks.

Of course color will vary by light conditions, weather, and time of year.

The creek, in scale is about 10 to 12 feet across, and as the earlier photo showed, I had indeed colored it an off greengrey, but the clear silicone color refraction changed it to a blue, very annoying. Actually, for my modular boards my small creeks are clear water, being to scale, about 4 to 5 feet across and only inches deep.

We we could be picky about water being green or what ever color in your world but I like blue. I'sorry that what is that color but we actually have clear running streams so you could make them clear with rocks showing through.

However everyone will recognize a blue line on a table as water. Tradition, it's what makes gaming great.

Thank you for your ideas. I will try them out.

You got me thinking about the scale of streams that people use, using Napoleonics or ACW as an example.

Some rules have a battalion as 2 1"stands, so 1 inch is about 75 yards.

They will have a "stream" 3" across with bank scrubbery another inch on each side. … Seems like we have a 225 yard, 700 foot wide river. …. This is the Rhine or Ohio… something that armored steamboats can fight on….something that was practically non-bridgable durign those eras…… something that might be crossed by an extensive pontoon-based bridge which would require a major theater-scale effort.,,,,,,,,,,,,,Uhh?

While it might look okay and in scale to the minature figures… and movement rules are ginned up be reasonable… the fire and movement and defense and offense unit packing gotta be all screwed up.

I say make the streams narrow as you can without totally making the relative figure:scenary scale unsightly