Transparent Tile Color Pallette

[Grover]

Building historic MOCs sometimes requires landscapes including water.  One of the popular trends is to use the trans-light blue tiles for water (probably due to large amounts included in the recent Ninjago sets) with varying color underneath to show depth.  I love the technique of using tiles for water, but have never been a fan of the trans-light blue color except for ice and Caribbean-type waters.  Thus, I began my search for color combinations that would best represent various types of water and/or ice.  To this end, I prepared a chart of various 'natural' colors (greens, browns, and blues), then added white and black for comparison.  Below is a copy of the chart I prepared by taking 4x4 plates (or an equivalent) and adding tiles of varying colors.  Each of the setups is photographed with the same camera on the same day, with the same conditions.

I thought I'd share this with anyone who was interested, particularly because it could help choose color combinations for projecting depth.  I was a little surprised how little difference there is with some combinations, such as the dark blue, dark green, and black with the trans-green tiles.  I personally like the idea of the trans-green tiles for ponds, swamps, and other less-flowing water, while I tend to like the trans-brown for oceans, rivers, and other moving bodies of water.  The trans-clear looks good to me for ice and whitecaps in water.  I hope that this will be useful for some of you as well.

[Johnny1360]

This chart should prove to be very useful and should help save time experimenting with different colors for water. Thanks for taking the time to do this and post it.