Build: Fountain of Youth

Motivation and it’s trigger

This project dragged me out of a motivation low. I can't really tell why, but I hadn’t really had a drive for miniature painting in spring 2026. Video games, music or doom scrolling were all more important in the evening hours.
Going through my posts you might have noticed that challenges are my thing. A task with some limitation and clear timeframe. And that's exactly what you get at Roman Lappats Patreon
He posts regular art improvement challenges with a very specific topic. This time: A still life with a statue.
I immediately had a fountain in my mind, because on a trip through the German city Koblenz - where I earn my living - I saw beautiful fountains. A thing where the city is somehow proud of.

Find the right mini

Now what miniature would match a fountain? Often these fountains present arbitrary people or at most 18th century military. No barbarians, aliens or scifi soldiers which make the biggest part of my box of minis.

I did choose the female elve mage with flowing robe from darksword miniatures . It looks a bit like a holy icon and that fits perfectly to a fountain.

Build or Print?

I didn't even think about printing or find and buy something. Scratch building is such a fun, and here it isn’t even necessary to find something detailed. Such an old fountain is rough and made of structures only.

The basin

The basin had to match the mini. It needs sufficient space for water. I checked various round plastic boxes but finally came to the idea and cut the top of a plastic bottle. You can choose the proper radius by placing the cut on the right spot.

The edges of such a basin are usually rounded and the plastic bottle edges are definitely not. I did choose my favorite garden tool to fixate my plants: a small rubber hose. It could be easily sliced and placed on the edge with a bit of glue.

The socket

Having a look at the reference pictures, you'll see that these sockets are made of various structures. Sometimes more playful, sometimes less. I was not in the mood to sculpt too much here. In my small workshop I found nuts and washers. As that lacked variation in shape, I cut a ping pong ball as base (great memories of the beauty of the sea and the last Plainries kitbash challenge).

Now how high should that socket be? As propagated in literature about composition, the golden ratio is never a bad choice.
That's why the socket with the basin is ~1.6 the size of the statue. You'll find the same ratio later in the backdrop vs fountain measure.

What kind of water?

When it comes to water, I'm always afraid of what material to choose. Resin? Water effect? Or just paint it? I chose the later one cause my resin experiments were a 50/50 success story up to now. So I filled the major part of the basin with tin foil and covered it up with cheap epoxy putty.
The stand, or rock for the statue in the basin was just a piece of styrofoam tightly integrated in the epoxy.
The top-level received a coat of milliput because it can be smoothed quite nicely with water for an even surface.

That filling made the whole thing quite heavy, and the pingpong ball was not the most robust foundation, so I did fill it with putty too and sanded everything a bit.

The base

I imagined the fountain to stand in an old overgrown park - embedded in a circle of gravel framed by cobblestones.
I have quite some cobblestones from juweela which just had to be glued and heavily treated with tools to look old.
The circle that makes the frame is not exactly centered. Centering and parallel lines make scenes appear artificial - every little offset helps against that.
Finally the center was filled with earth, sand and little stones, and various tufts and foam

The “fountain"

Now it's about the last detail. The water from the fountain is usually distributed by a hose and some nozzles for every water jet.
I chose 4 nozzles from the sides so that the main view is not disturbed by a stream.
The hose is made of a bigger piece of wire, you might have noticed that wire in the milliput “phase” already.

The nozzles cut from plastic rods. Glueing these was a bit of a hazle, but after glueing two tweezers together, it was done.
Now an active water stream will roughen the whole water surface - so making it even with milliput was counter productive. I chose to apply acrylic paste for the surface. Great stuff as it dries a bit like rubber but keeps the structure.

Next highly suggested read: The painting process. ( and it contains a bit more building tha expected )