Blue Sky Smilin' At Me..

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I’m sloooooowly making a little progress on the hardboard backdrop as you can see in this (2) photos stiched together. I’m not real good at stitchin’, gotta get me one of those panarama maker program thingys.

Anyway, I guess the next step is the blue sky color which is a fairly light blue. I’m planning to paint the blue down about 2/3rds of the way and the bottom 1/3rd gets another coat of white, and while the two are still wet, take a dry brush and try to blend the two together. If anybody’s already done this and have some pointers, I’m all ears and would be eternally grateful…[8D]
Oh! Note the temporary plywood “layout” in the foreground for running a train when I can’t stand it anymore…[:D]
Jarrell

2

Wow, you are moving on this like I moved on my layout, Jarrell. Whoa, Boy!

Really, though, it is quite impressive. Good photo blending, too.

Yer a man posessed.

3

Crandell, I got the blue paint on it today and hopefully tomorrow I can get the blue and white blended together so that it looks decent, without an airbrush… just a regular brush. We’ll see!
Jarrell

4

Jacon, I did the same with my backdrop, however a tip that worked for me is to use a wet bru***o do the blending rather than a dry one. this keeps the paint from drying too quickly and mixes them together better.
Dip a clean 3-4inch brush in clean water and then brush vertically up and down smearing white into blue and vice verca, then brush horizontaly to get a smooth even blend, this also creates barely visible horizontal white patches which simulate distant horison clouds/humidity. I also used a spray bottle with clean water and misted the area regularly to stop it drying out before I was happy with the blend. If it goes a little wrong in places it is easy enough to repaint a small area with either white or blue and just blend it in again.

Good luck and have fun. Let us see how it turns out.
Karl

5

Thanks, Karl, for the tips. Now that my turntable is apparently beaten into submission, my next step is (dah, dah, dah, DAAAAAAAH!!)…you guessed it…the backdrop. (gulp)

( I hope my wife and I can horse this 250 lb layout away from the corner and not have anything break.)

6

If you have access to a Model Railroader Mag from August 2003, you might want to look at an article by Pelle Soeborg entitled “Foolproff sky painting.”

I think he did what you want to do.

Ken

7

Thanks Ken, I don’t have them that far back but I appreciate it anyway.
Jarrell