I thought I’d pass something I do often when taking photographs on my layout. Back when I was trying to figure out how I wanted to do my permanent backdrop I hand painted a couple of pieces of scrap hardboard in a skyblue color, using rattle cans, and even tried some freehand clouds. After they had dried I overspayed, very thinly, the bottom portion of the panel with white. Here’s a version leaned against the backdrop…
If the background area in a photo isn’t going to be very large I place the portable sky board in the background to hide the walls, doors, furniture etc. of the train room. I only do this when I,m shooting in such a way that the regular backdrop isn’t behind the subject.
The boards I have aren’t all that big so I need to paint some that are about 18 inches to 2 feet tall X 4 feet long. When they’re not being used I stand them on end ‘round the corner’ somewhere. If you don’t want to get into painting clouds, just paint them a nice sky blue color and then use a little white on the bottom 3rd. Very easy to do and they make a world of difference in pictures.
I made one of those too, Jarrell, but unfortunately I chose a piece of foam core board, and when the sky blue acrylics dried it forced the surface of the board to become slightly concave…it curled on me noticeably. Because of its limited use in that condition, I used plastic drywall screw-type wall anchors to fasten it to the back of a low board diorama on which I placed my Lionel Challenger
My backdrop is nothing as good as yours, but I had the idea. [:D] I also use hand towels sprayed with tacky glue and covered with ground foam of various types to act as a terrain backdrop.
I also used a piece of foamboard for my “place in the clouds.”
I used white board, and sprayed blue unevenly on it. This board took about a minute to paint. The clouds look more like cirrus formations this way. For lower-altitude clouds, I think you’d want to paint white-over-blue.
What kind of carboard? Cerial box cardboard or large heavy appliance box hardware? I’ve keeping my out of idea’s on back drops and this may be the answer to a semi-permament back drop. I can’t paint walls or anything, apparment rules plus they are textured walls (not stucco though, more like a globbed on paint). This could work though with some commercial double sided tape to hold the back drop to the walls. My train area will share living room area and one of the layouts I’m looking it is a U shape with one leg towards the rest of the living room and I wanted some sort of removable back drop so it wouldn’t be as obrusive (opposed to basically building an entire wall). The plan calls for HO scale with DCC/sound so I wanted some kind of back drop that could deaden the sound (and not disturb others in the living area) but still be taken down when not operating so it doesn’t look like, well so it doesn’t look like I just added a wall into the living room.
Here is a simple backdrop for shooting rolling stock photos - a couple scrap pieces of wood, a couple of scrap pieces of 1/4" masonite, long enough for 3 to 4 cars, and some building fronts designed and printed on my computer. Even the ground cover is printed. Sky is blue spray paint, wispy clouds are white spray primer. Buildings and ground are glued on after the assembly is screwed together and the sky painted. Track is old train set sections glued to the base. Not all that hard to put together and not detailed enough to draw the eye away from the models.
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