A River Runs Through It Diorama

First off this post has nothing to do with A River Runs Through It, but it seemed like a catchy title.  

Dioramas/scenes are great props to performance showing. I've seen plenty of cool ones featuring some type of water in it. 

For a long time I've only admired them, wondering how I could ever figure out how to make one with one. After researching references and reading through how-tos by numerous authors, I decided to give it a try. You can only get better, right?  So this will be a total trial and error project that I'm hoping will be more positive than a failure. :)

I gathered supplies.  

I used poster board to be the base. I wanted to make it showable sized, which meant I need to be well within the limits of the qualifications. During Christmas, Michaels had a sale on snow diorama bases, so I bought a pack. Really it's just foam pieces. I drew out the outline of where I wanted the river to be. 

I hacked up the foam pieces to fit within where I wanted them to go. 

I covered the open hole with plaster sheets. 

Then modeling paste was used to create ridges and a 'banky' look to the side so it wasn't straight. I've used modeling paste to give models a furry coat, so I thought it would be interesting to try sculpting the bank's ridges with it and I'm happy I did. I wanted erosion from water to show. Plus ridges make it more realistic looking. 

Using some foam pieces, I also ripped, tore, and sanded pieces down to have more of a appearance of rocks. 

I glued them down, and coated modge podge onto it as filler and to cement everything together. I have no idea if modge podge is filler, but it seemed like a good idea at the time! The gel medium will be used to make a current/waterfall going over the rocks. 

Well, the next part is painting!