Finalising river water surface

On Harry Brunk's famed UC&N his rivers looked decidedly wrong to me with their green/blue colouring.  I should have trusted the eye of the artist.  When we got to Colorado and stood at the side of the Animas river, there it was coloured with copper oxides.  I wanted to feature this colouring while keeping the rock bottom of the river just visible.  Several coats of Magic Water were poured over the river base with some brown stain added to the last layer in places where the water runs deep.

I had put in a coat of straight brushed gloss medium along the river to represent flow then covered it with Future polish/varnish etc for shine but this didn't look right. So I brushed over some neat PVA white glue and stippled it with a 1/2" wide brush from bank to bank on a test patch.  This was more like it so I went ahead and treated the whole river surface. I may need to gloss it up a bit when finished but time will tell once it's dried.

Original straight brush strokes

Test ripples

Top river with PVA coat

Pool before PVA coat

Pool with PVA coat