Backdrop

Well with the track down and wired, it's time to move on to scenery. This is my favorite part of model railroading as it brings everything to life! I have a vision of how things should look, hopefully it well work out that way.

First step is to get a backdrop up so the layout looks like it is only a slice of the world we are seeing. The closest I've ever gotten to doing a backdrop before was placing some MZZ cutouts on blue poster board back when I was building a shelf layout (just out of college.) With this a more permanent layout, I wanted a better looking backdrop.

I actually started on this before starting any benchwork. Just before putting up the benchwork I taped the drywall seems and sanded them to make a smooth surface along the entire area the benchwork for phase 1 would go. I then painted the wall from the benchwork height to the ceiling with a blue paint (Valspar brand, color: Skywriter, flat - from the local Lowes.) This was put on with a roller and seemed to have lots of streaks, but dried without any. Afterwards, I've read several articles on painting backdrops and the recommend using both a white color and the blue and blending them so that the color closer to the benchwork is fainter and thus looks farther away. You can see this if you look at the sky outside, it's whiter and fainter towards the horizon.

Having done that prep work ahead of time, this week I started on the rest of the backdrop. Over the last few months I've been reading articles in my collection of Model Railroader magazines to get a feel for what needed to be done. I also called on my local artist expert for some advice. My mom has been painting and drawing since she was in school and so it was natural for me to turn to her for advice. From talking to her and reading in MR, it seemed the the easiest paints to use would be acrylics. Mom gave me a link to order from (Cheap Joe's Art Stuff) and ideas on the colors to get (white, black, ultramarine blue, some greens, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and a gold for fields). I purchased the Liquitex basics brand as they came in tubes and were fairly inexpensive. I went for the 8 oz tubes since I'll be painting a lot before the layouts finished.

So on to painting clouds. Having spent several weeks looking a clouds, reading Scenery Step by Step article in the latest (June 2008) issue of MR on painting clouds, I was ready to jump in. First I praticed a painting a few on a spare 1'x1' ceiling tile I had laying around. Having gained confidence (and Mom's approval), I jumped into the "real" thing today. Using white, ultramarine, and black I painted some clouds behind Neuhemsbach and over the autobahn scene (south of Enkenbach.) I also used a wide brush to paint some white on the backdrop and then a clean wash cloth to smear it almost off to give the effect of thin clouds. It helps to have a few photos around for reference.

I'm not sure what I think so far, but with acrylics I can paint over and try again if I don't like it. Let me know what you think!