I ran into some time intensive problems with the water but learned a whole lot in the process.

When doing water for dioramas there is usually two different types of materials you should use one being resin the other acrylic medium. I have never worked with resin before so it was a bit intimidating therefore I went with something I tend to use on every diorama acrylic medium. I use acrylic gloss medium fluid thinned down with water to seal all of my dioramas as it is a pretty thick and substantial top coat. Traditionally with water in dioramas you either pour clear resin into the area, let it pool, and manipulate it as it hardens or you make the waves out of a solid mold-able material like clay, paint it, and top it off with multiple thin layers of acrylic medium.

For the Clanche Custom diorama I wanted to do the pour method but with no resin I thought of trying the same technique but with acrylic medium. Unfortunately that didn’t work out as well as I hoped as even after 10 days of drying it still couldn’t achieve the level of transparency that pouring resin could give.

Getting tired of waiting for something that seemed like it would never happen I changed my method in handling the water. First I hand painted a mixture of blue/green/grey and bits of clear green on top of the pool of acrylic medium. Afterwards I covered it with multiple layers of dabbed acrylic medium.

Once I was satisfied with the layers I wanted there to be some movement within the water so I needed to simulate foamy splashes of water. For this I used acrylic gloss medium heavy gel. This gel is just like the fluid but is very thick like a paste.

First I thinned the gel and did a few passes at making the splashes with a slight drybrush of white paint afterwards. I then coated the water with acrylic medium fluid again to keep the shine after the drybrush but still wasn’t satisfied so I took the gel unthinned and applied the splashes like that.

Working with this water gave me quite a big headache but the whole reason I chose to add water in the first place was to gain experience with it and I sure did.