Backdrop progress

[Pomperaugrr]

This is the backdrop I recently painted for my new Housatonid Railroad.  I am fairly happy with my first attempts at painting a landscape.  Previously, I just had pale blue or blue with some hand painted clouds.  This was done with home made stencils for the clouds and freehand hills.







Now the track laying can commence.  I only have the start of my semi-hidden staging yard in so far.  It will be slow progress, but I'll keep chipping away a few hours per week.  Once winter hits, I should be able to pick up the pace.

Eric

[tom mann]

that looks excellent!

[Pomperaugrr]

Thanks.  I was leary of attempting this, since I have never painted landscapes before.  I didn't want it too detailed either.  Once the blue base coat was dried, I did all 58 linear feet of the clouds landforms in one 8 hour marathon session.  Painting a backdrop after track and buildings are in place is not a fun task, so I got that out of the way first.

Most of the landscape portion will be hidden by buildings and trees.  I was hoping to have distant views open up here and there to give the layout some depth.  The area where the HRRC runs in CT, is heavily wooded and hilly.  You do get scenic vistas every so often, so I want to capture that effect.  

I have a hell of a lot of scratchbuilding and kitbashing ahead of me to replicate the town and industrial areas I am depicting on this CT and MA shortline.

Eric

[tom mann]

Yeah, the clouds really look nice and subtle.  Thankfully, not at all like the recent article in MR showing using cotton balls^*.  The landscape has a nice hazy colorization to it, and should look even better with foreground buildings and scenery.


^*  :

[Ian MacMillan]

Starting to look good Eric!

[GaryHinshaw]

Agreed, the clouds look great!  How did you do them?
-gfh

[Pomperaugrr]

Agreed, the clouds look great!  How did you do them?
-gfh

Thanks.  I made my own cloud stencils with plain old posterboard.  I cut out generic cloud edge shapes and reinforced the pieces of posterboard with scrap foamcore.  I lightly misted Krylon white primer along the stencil edges, while holding the stencils at least 1-2 inches away from the backdrop.

(3) 11" x 15" pieces of posterboard:  $.59
(1) can Krylon white primer:   $1.97
scrap foamcore:  free

The entire backdrop was painted using only four colors.  I mixed forest green craft paint with some of the background sky blue latex for the distant hills.  I misted these with primer to add atmospheric haze.  Then with the remainder, I mixed in more forest green to get the foreground hill color.  Painted the hills with a 1" throwaway brush, but used a 1" fan brush to make the tree shapes along the ridge lines.  I scrubbed in a small amount of tan craft paint for representing distant fields, then misted over it again with primer.  Finally, I addes a few stamped white squares with a matchstick to suggest distant buildings in a few places.

I figured the worst that would happen is that if I didn't like it, I could just roll another coat of blue sky and do it over.  I'm satisfied with the first attempt.

The lighting and focus sucks, but here's another shot where I am mocking up a bridge for planning purposes, showing the effect I was going for.



Eric

[Roger Holmes]

Pompy--That's looking great.  It's been a long time since I've seen you post.  Glad that you're back

[MEC_FAN]

Eric, that looks really good now one of these days I got to get brave and try it.

John

[Ed Kapuscinski]

That's looking good man!

[Pomperaugrr]

That's looking good man!

Ed, I appreciate that, but thanks to you, I'm going to have to invest in a hell of a lot of Super Trees to pull this off! 

Eric

[chuck geiger]

Clouds look better than the stencils that were selling for 10.00 when the LHS had them from
New London Industries. http://newlondonindustries.com/ I agree with Tom, I don't know what
MR was thinking with "cotton clouds". Love the color fading from dark to light in the hills.mtns.

[bobcat]

Looks great Eric. I'm going to use your approach with light and dark hills to show depth on the next section I work on. Too late for the section I'm working on now.