How to make a blood pool

[maroonldr]

Hello all.  I'm going to be "borrowing" an idea I found on the interweb and will be making a blood filled Altar out of the GW Arcane Ruins set.  It will have a 3/8" pool of blood in it and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for painting.  I'll be using a two part epoxy resin for the blood and was wondering if I should paint the walls/bottom a flagstone grey and tint the resin or paint the walls/bottom various reds and NOT tint the resin.  I took the time to make the bottom look like flagstone and would like to add some skulls at the bottom (this is GW after all!) so I'd like to be able to see that detail.  My guess is just paint everything in the pool various reds but I'm not sure. 

Thanks for any help you care to give!

[AndrewBeasley]

Forgive the pun but blood is thicker than water (OK I've get my coat now) so I would tint the resin and float the skulls in the top rather than sit them under the resin.

One simple way to try the result is paint the inside of a disposable cup and fill with water - if you like the result go with it...

Take care with the two part mix - bubbles form very very easily and due to the viscosity may not escape before it sets.  I would go with Magic Water myself - more costly but great results are to be had.

[maroonldr]

That makes sense logically but it may be a bit jarring to see.  I've used the two party stuff before and have liked the results.  I may end up trying the cup method just to see unless someone else has some experience with this type of thing.

[Connectamabob]

Blood isn't very transparent. IRL it'll only be transparent to a mm or two at most, and translucent to maybe half a cm (you can get deeper translucency by putting a strong light behind it, but normal light and reflective translucence stops pretty fast). That means the only thing that really matters in regards to what you fill the pool with is the surface tension at the edges. You could use plaster if you wanted to, and it'll look exactly like the real thing (in scale) if you paint it right. Making the pool transparent only makes it look like bloody water (or jello) instead of blood.

[Eric the Shed]

hows about adding dark red paint to pva glue and pouring it into the altar?

[Connectamabob]

PVA will shrink as it dries, so you could end up with a big basin in the surface, or it might pull away from the sides if you do it in one pour. Doing it in multiple pours/layers would work, but you'd have to wait for each layer to fully dry between pours to get a proper flat surface.

In any case, actually coloring it intrinsically would be a waste of paint. All you need to do is color the surface since, again, in scale blood that's any thicker than a coat of paint shouldn't be visibly transparent or translucent at all.

Fill it with whatever comfort prefers, and don't worry about color or bubbles or anything else but level surface and edges. Then float a layer of blood-colored paint over the top, and blend darker and flatter shades around the edges.