My basement walls are field stone,nowere close to flat and level. I did paint them white just to get rid of the cave look.
Yesrerday I came across a half gallon of blue paint,left over from the bathroom. I remember you guys talking about backdrops, and after a lot of remixing I found the paint useable.
Was a chore to paint,without messing up the scereny,but managed to paint a 4ft high swat around the layout. A day and night type difference.
My point;even a plain blue background is worth the effort. Better if done before building. I’m tempted to try some clouds,but being the walls are so rough not sure it’ll work.
When we moved into our current house, we found that the concrete block walls had some minor leakage along the face, with more along where the floor met the walls. I sealed the floor level cracks with hydraulic concrete, and painted watersealing paint (Zinsser I believe, from Menards) on the walls. The paint I used comes in three colors - white, yellow and blue. The blue looked like a good sky color, so I used that. Even though it was only painted concrete block, it looked better than what was there before. When I started adding ‘real’ backdrops, I used the same color blue (regular paint mixed to the same color as the sealing paint, as regular paint is cheaper) so there isn’t as big a difference between the areas with a backdrop and those without.
You can find various shades of blue that appear hazy. In VA, where I live, you can have hazy skies even in March. Backdrops don’t need to be masterpieces. They provide realism and not the centerpieces of a layout.
This is true; but in my case, there is no way to attach anything to the wall. Had I been thinking/planning,I could have mounted somthing to the benchwork.That fact no longer matters.
I feel I inproved my layout by smearing some left over paint on the wall. Didn’t cost me a dime, = poorman’s backdrop
Well, while that backdrop doesn’t look like a “normal” flat backdrop, it sure beats a plain wall. It looks like it will work fine until the time and reassures appear to make a flat backdrop! Nice job!
I think it turned out great! You would have had to do a lot of furring, shimming and messing around to get a flat piece of masonite or drywall in place.
You’d have to fasten the wall board ( what ever you use) to the back of the lay out, and some type of studs to support it, and fastened it all to the ceiling joist, to avoid trying to shim and fur out that stone wall.
And with the lay out already there, way to unpractical.
Our club decided to forgoe detailed painted backdrops. The walls are stuccoed concrete. All we did was paint them a medium blue and then use cardboard stencils cut to mimic cloud shapes to add some clouds. You can see the effect here:
The stencils are cut to the top profile of the clouds. In other words, the actual area of the cloud is open and the stencil stops the paint from getting to the wall above the stencil. The body of the cloud is sprayed on in various densities and heights so no two clouds look exactly alike. It is important to note that the stencils are not held tight to the wall. They are positioned an inch or two away from the wall so that the stencil pattern does not form a sharp edge on the clouds. The whole wall was done with only four or five stencils. A light spray was used to generally lighten the colour of the sky closer to the horizon.
