I’m about to start planning and painting my backdrop, and I have a question regarding which paints I should use.
Currently, it has an undercoat of a water-based sealer (white), then two coats of sky-blue interior house paint, which is also water-based. As such, I was thinking of using water-based student acrylics to paint the mountains, trees, etc. I was then going to seal the backdrop with a matte spray afterwards.
However, I’ve seen some articles refer to latex paint, and I was wondering if I should use this instead? Will it work with the water-based paints I have at the moment?
Latex should work fine. Latex is waterbased. I used latex for the base colors, such as sky, hills, etc., and I used the acrylic latex hobby paints for the details.
Latex is basically what is standard household paint now, so it’s cheap compared to artist’s acrylics. But your backdrop doesn’t seem really huge, so don’t know if that’ll be a factor.
AFAIK, the two paint technologies are pretty compatible, just ensure the previous coat is dry.
May I ask why you feel that you need to seal the paint? Unless you are planning on power washing your backdrop there is absolutely no need to seal it. The acrylic paints will seal themselves just fine.
As far as I know, acrylic paint is latex paint. No need to worry about minor variations in the formulas.
It’s the first time I’ve done backdrop painting, so I’m not sure what needs to be done. Given that freight cars and locomotives usually need to be sealed, I assumed the backdrop would be the same.
It can get fairly humid, especially when there’s a storm coming on. I’m in South-East Queensland, Australia, with my layout in the garage. That’s the only place I can put it.
I would say that a “major humidity problem” is a situation where you are experiencing mold growth, i.e. in a damp basement where you need a dehumidifier to keep the moisture under control. If all you are experiencing is occasional humidity from storms I don’t think you will have a problem, that is unless the garage is leaking and leaving standing water on the floor.
I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted in this thread, but I’ve finished the backdrop on the first side of the layout. After looking at photos of the area like this one: http://www.hulloakes.com/images/HullOakesEntry.jpg, I realised that I just needed to give the impression of a tree-covered hillside:
Someone told me to have folks focus their attention on what’s in front of the backdrop. Painting the backdrop is a matter of using simple latex paint from HD or Lowes. Use the acrylic for painting the background trees etc.
