Hi all! Just thought I would take a moment to show my first attempts at backdrop detailing. And when I say detailing I don’t mean “detailed” like a photograph! As many of you know, my layout is set in New England in the fall. Previous layouts I have built have all had backdrops but nothing more than sky and clouds. I wanted more. To extend the scene so to speak. I’ve read about every imaginable article on backdrop painting and watched different videos and believed I had learned enough for the time being. So this morning I decided to just jump in and get on with it. I first penciled in my hills and mountains and ridge lines. Using tan acrylic paint I colored in the land furthest away and then using darker brown acrylic paint I colored in the land closest to the 3-d scenery. Like so…sorry for the blur.
Then I grabbed an assortment of different brushes, a cheapo set of artists acrylics and a small plastic organizer box I used for water and the compartments for blending colors. Kind of like a poor man’s palette.
I began accenting the tops of the far hills with a thin line of burnt umber. Then mixed up various shades of greens, reds, yellows, browns and oranges. I used brushes with stiff bristles, a fan type brush and a soft bristle to stipple the shades onto the scene. Many times overlapping, sometimes with thicker paint, sometimes with almost dry brushing. I swirled faint white paint throughout with a very soft brush that seemed to kind of blend the colors and produce a colorful effect. For the closer hills I did the same thing as for the further ones but made the coloring a bit more pronounced and added a few individual trees with the trunks painted in one swoop from the bottom to the top. This created a thicker paint streak from the base of the tree to a few wisps of paint towards the top tha
Excellent first attempt, very good even if it wasn’t the first. Really like the fourth photo. I am planning a New England fall also, for my large layout, haven’t fully decided time of year for the small, “experimental” layout yet.
My wife gave me a set of paints for Christmas, to kick me in the tail, as my backdrop has been undercoated for quite awhile. I already had a lot of different paints, but the gift has served it’s purpose and I am nearly ready to give it a go.
One thing I might suggest is that instead of using one of your divided parts boxes, get a dozen eggs in one of those new see through cartons. They have 24 compartments and a large flat area also. I have several of them waiting in the wings for when I get the paints out.
Well your artistic ability with a paint brush far outweighs my own for a first attempt I would say looks like you mailed it. I have this method I borrowed from Howard Zane HIWOB system of modeling Hide It With A Bush I tend to try and hide the backdrops as much as possible with trees, shrubs etc. so you just see a faint hint of the almost always photo backdrop with the sky cut out. Looks very nice keep us posted on the progess.
Thanks guys. I know the foreground backdrop trees (how’s that for irony[swg]) look very rudimentary when viewed as such in a photo like above. Almost like a child’s painting. But I am fairly certain that the 3-D trees and foliage yet to be placed will cover most of them anyway. The trick should be in the illusion of a scene that continues far and away. I’m not sure yet, but I may add some more distant “bluish” mountains further on back. One thing great about acrylics is if you screw up, just paint right over! I have studied photo backdrops as a possibility and I’ve seen some awesome looking results by some here on this forum and Tony Koester’s backdrop looks very very nice as well, but I was concerned about 2 things; the expense of it and the possibility the photos would have too much detail and detract from my real scenery. I thing a photo backdrop would work better for a layout set in the plains states or to replicate farm lands as opposed to mountainous scenery. (just my 2 cents and I’m sure somebody will prove me wrong on that point somehow!) I have cut out buildings from magazines, catalogs etc. that I will try to incorporate into parts of the foreground part of the backdrop. I will try to use them in such a way that painting foliage over parts of them will hide the details in such and not they will not stick out glaringly in the minds eye when viewed. Maybe I’ll keep this thread as a “backdrop blog” and keep posting progress here to get some opinions as I move forward.
I picked up on Tony’s use of photo backdrops as well hence the reason why I have decided on changing some of the back drop or shall I say adding photo backdrops where I had intended to just have sky and clouds. Your trees look perfectly fine in my o/p as was told to me by an expert well published modeler, one of the biggest mistakes a lot of guys make is giving the back drop too much detail hence drawing your eye to it as opposed to it’s original intent of filling in a blank space. Your mind is supposed to just see the train and remember scenery is there to enhance the trains as we too often forget. So instead of seeing your train pass a window or a black wall or the rest of the train room or perhaps your laundry room the scene is that much more believable. When too much detail is added it’s only natural to focus on it with your eye detracting from the train going through the scene. He gave me an example of a very nicely hand painted farm scene where everything was clear and crisp showing cows grazing a farmer on a tractor writing on the roof of the bar so you naturally wanted to see what else was there now your prone to see the actual imperfections.
A few tips I picked up from the same person on photo backdrop scenes was we all tend to flush fit or make them perpendicular to the track surface now there is a distinct line break between the two. To remedy that possibly curve the bottom of the photo backdrop ever so slightly so it attaches to the horizontal surface coving it a bit so you don’t see the sharp bend. I have contemplated asking one of the companies who make them if they would be able to leave lets say and extra 1/2" on the bottom surface of the photo for this purpose.
Sorry to go off on a tangent but as I mentioned earleir your work looks first rate and when it’s combined with the rest of the scenery I think it will only serve to make the scenery look all that much more believable
Thanks alot Allegheny! Also thank the anonymous expert well published modeler for me as well! Certainly appreciate it and I don’t mind tangents at all! Anyway, an hour and a half of painting this morning before heading off to work. 1st pic I added a row of pine trees climbing the ridge and 2nd pic I added a bit more detail as this part of the scenery is very close to the viewer. The structures on the backdrop are actually photos I cut out from various catalogs. The use of foreground foliage helps to hide the detail a bit.
