Now that I have the blue paint issue settled, how do I make clouds that are decent looking, I want to do something on the easy side. No airbrushng, just brush, sponge, and rags to use to do this. Clouds are going on a sky blue concrete basement wall.
Get Dave Frary’s book “How to Build Realistic Model Railroad Scenery.” Has great section on painting backdrops, clouds and mountains as well as many other aspects of scenery making.
Right now there is a beautiful blue sky, lighter at the horizon, darker above and not a cloud in the sky. Of course it’s 20 degrees and 30 mph wind. No clouds can work fine.
Simplest clouds are the wispy ones I mentioned in your other thread.
You could make a stencil and use a rattle can of white. A number of folks have had success with that.
For mine that I’m not totally satisfied with, I used a brush. There was considerable improvement between the two trys, so a scrap to pratice on, regardless what method you use, is probably a good idea.
As mentioned there are some good books and videos to give you some guidance.
Good luck,
Richard
I have one small bit of heartburn with painted clouds. They don’t move!
My personal solution (not generally applicable) is to paint my high backdrops a light grey with a slight blue tint - typical humidity haze on a hot late-summer day in soggy Central Japan. Thanks to modeled landforms (my prototypes ran in the depths of forested canyons) I don’t have to bother with low backdrops.
I also ‘haze’ my more ‘distant’ scenery with that same bluish grey. Think of looking across a West Virginia vista on a humid day. That’s my target.
OTOH, if you were modeling my immediate (1:1 scale) neighborhood, brilliant blue sky without a single cloud is the norm. So’s single-digit humidity.
Chuck (Modeling muggy Central Japan in September, 1964)
My advice is to use acrylics; use big brushes, 2" and wider; use a mist spray bottle to keep the paint workable; soften edges with a soft cloth or, dare I say it, your fingers; keep the cloud forms poorly defined because they are water vapour, not solid objects; don’t use pure white because it will stick out like a sore thumb.
I prefer to mass my clouds together rather than having solitary clouds that will be very noticeable. It’s very easy to over-define your clouds, which will definitely distract attention from the actual layout.
I did this one for my dad’s British layout
Just my ideas, not rules.
Mike
Howmus has a nice tutorial on making clouds with a stencil over on the General section of these forums. I know you said you didn’t want to airbrush, but he does a nice job with a rattle can.
Have fun,
Richard
I use methods similar to what Mike Dannemann describes in the Kalmbach backdrops book http://www.kalmbachstore.com/12425.html . I use plain acrylic white and Payne’s gray (Payne’s gray is easy to lighten by mixing with white compared to most grays or blacks). I start with the cloud shadows, mixing some fo the gray with varying amounts of white, then I build up the shapes with two or three passes of white. Acrylic goes on translucent, so each pass will add more definition and coverage.
In some areas like the above, I only add distant clouds using drywall primer. The primer I have has a slightly yellowish cast, and doesn’t go on anywhere close to opaque, so clouds painted with it have a far-away look.
Other places like this get a combination of distant and closer clouds painted with straight white and Paynes’ gray. Think in terms of overlapping cloud masses instead of individuals.
One last thing - ALWAYS work from photos. Don’t trust your memory to tell you how something is supposed to look. If you’re scratchbuilding a boxcar, you’ll need some references like photos and plans. It