I can’t deny it any longer. Sure I’ve got plenty of chores with spring and a new garden and the war of the roses and a 5 hour lawn that has to be mowed every week.
But I have to face it. It’s been over a month since I worked on the layout. The next step is an easy one. It is airbrushing white paint from the track base over the existing sky blue walls. Shouldn’t take more than an hour. Two hours with set-up and clean-up.
But I figure it’s not the airbrush that has me spooked. It’s the backdrop painting. I figure it will take a couple months.
In my vision, the three-wall room is painted in a great scenic vista of which the railroad passes through. The town of Train City is 5% on the layout and 95% on the backdrop. Train City on the layout sits in the corner, but on the backdrop extends to the horizon on two walls. My wife, the artist, says she’ll help, but she wants pictures as reference.
Like I have pictures of a fictional town that exists only in my head.
Nope, it’s something I’ve gotta do. And I don’t have a clue how to start.
Not that I’m an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but why not sketch on paper what you “see” in your head…that might be all your artist wife needs as a starting point…then show her pictures of buildings from your era and turn her loose!
Not a bad idea. But just to be clear, she didn’t say she would do it. She said she would help. She thinks I good enough of an artist to do it myself. She’s going to coach me and show me how to fix my screw-ups.
Just remember the easiest way to fix any screw ups is to keep the airbrush with white paint handy…a little bit of spraying and you have a clean canvas to start anew…
There was a thread earlier in the week about photo backdrops. Since you live in a relatively pleasant and scenically interesting area, why not take the wife, the kids, the dog and the camera out for a drive, with everyone looking for “photo opportunities” while the dog does the driving? Snap a bunch of pictures, and you’ll have something to work with. Maybe you’ll want to blow them up to poster size and use them directly, or maybe they’ll just be that basis of your material for sketching on the wall.
There are several photo and painting backdrop companies around, perhaps one of them (or some combination of backdrops) would work for you. I suspect you’re hesitating because you don’t really want to do the backdrop painting etc. Don’t be afraid to use the products out there!! You can cut out a building from one backdrop and one from another, use a few flats, and probably put them all together into something that will work for you.
I have been painting mine, 2 feet at a time, when the spirit moves. I have it about 1/3 done, and though I am not an artist either, I am enjoying the project. At the current pace, I will have it done about the same time, the scenery and the track work are done. I hope that is before I get enough money to start the roundhouse scene.
Chip, you can do this in layered stages. I did the basic blue around the three walls in about 30 minutes with a hand brush and acrylic. Later, I used that same brush, a three incher, to feather in a lower brighter layer after adding some white to the original. Later still, another lower band with more white added. This took about one hour total over two days. Several weeks later, I grabbed the Walmart acrylics, mixed a bunch of green and yellow with some water to make it go longer, and then started dabbing at the place where I had stopped adding ground goop. Tilt the brush, this time a half-incher, angled this way, then 90 opposite, to create low-sweeping pine branches. You can add short vertical dabs of greyish brown paint later to give the glimpses of trunks now and there.
Chip, you know how to do this; grab a slab of cardboard and develop a quick and effective technique that makes it look like a forest. If She says you can do it, you can do it…who’d know better?
It is the way I went. I had to experiment with brush dabs and swipes until my mind said to me that it was actually looking like trees. Don’t forget to use different greens, even some quite dark stuff here and there.
No, SpaceMouse, you do not have Model Railroader’s Block. I cannot diagnose you, only you can diagnose yourself, but…
I have a similar situation of intending to work on the layout, or even a little structure project, and not finding the time or will to go ahead and do it very often. Not that I don’t care. But I have forum-aholism. I am a forum-aholic. I can’t stop reading messages and posting replies. I am powerless over my forum addicition. They have made my life unmanageable.
I cannot tell you that you are a forum-aholic. But go to a forum and try suddenly to stop foruming. The attempt may give you the shakes if you are true forum-aholic. But it may be worth the shock to discover the truth, if you are actually one of these forum addicted souls.
NOT AN ARTIST??? Yeah, right. Art, your backdrops look fantastic. When I figure out how to master this stick… oh, yeah, it’s called a ruler… Looks like I’m stuck with photobackdrops. But then, that’s not entirely a bad thing.
This is why my wife thinks I can do it. I did this painting last fall when I joined my wife’s plein aire group for a session. I only got the clouds and the upper left of the hillside done before we lost light.
Incredible! I think that is a fantastic rendering, Chip. If you can duplicate this in the hues you want for the time of day and weather, and then use a small brush to provide the details of foreground trees, you are there!
