I’ve always been fascinated by waterfalls. So was my grandfather, apparently. He was an artist, and painted a lot of waterfalls. I can’t paint, or draw, or any such thing, but I build LEGO! And naturally, I love trying to build waterfalls in LEGO 
Bulding waterfalls in LEGO is a big challenge for many reasons. A waterfall is something powerful, something moving, and it’s water. How do you represent that in LEGO? I have seen many creative solutions by many excellent builders, but here are some of my takes on it. From my first attempt, to my most recent.
This was my first attempt. It’s actually supposed to portray a frozen waterfall in winter, but the technique could just as well be used for a non-frozen one. This one felt a bit too square and it doesn’t look real, but I think I may be on to something 😉
My next attempt is a more stylistically blue waterfall. Blue is a common color used to represent water, but it undoubtedly becomes more cartoonish, as we all know a waterfall isn’t blue… I think I achieved some good dynamics in this, portraying how the water splits into multiple streams upon hitting rocks that stick out of the mountain side. I’ve seen this technique used by others as well, and it certainly does the job well, if you’re not in need of color realism.
The waterfall in this one (hidden in the back) wasn’t very successful in my opinion. It’s very blocky and doesn’t look natural at all. I wanted realism in color for this one, otherwise I think the previous variant with the blue arches would have worked better here. But I think this technique could be adapted to look better, and I would probably have made it look more natural if I had thought about it while building the mountain, instead of after placing everything else… (in addition, the color of the rest of the water is blue, but it should have been a more muddy-water color, but that’s an other story :P)
In my opinion, this is my best waterfall yet. I think I captured both the dynamic and the color quite well in this one. This technique could possibly have been used to create a better waterfall in the previous case also. I think I’ll be using this technique more, while still looking out for other ideas in the future
Which is your favorite? 😉