Tag Archives: painting

Scenery Part 2 – Paint and Texture

Finished base scenery in St Charles
Here’s the finished base scenery layer in St Charles as the L&N CV Local waits for Southern train 61 to clear the wye

Nearly a year ago I posted the beginnings of building my scenery using Howard Zane’s “paper shell” method. The unfinished red rosin paper shell about halfway through his process served as my basic scenery base for a while–it’s far better than plywood! As I’m nearing the time to move on to the upper deck, I finally got around to finishing the scenery base.

In progress scenery
This shot shows several steps in the scenery process including cardboard web, red rosin paper, and the finished base scenery with paint and dirt for texture

In the first post, I covered how to build the basic scenery form using cardboard strips, hot glue, and red rosin paper. Since that first attempt, I have changed my technique a little. I no longer glue a long strip to the backdrop (tedious) but instead just fold the cardboard strip to form a tab and glue the tab to the backdrop. Once the initial cardboard web and red-rosin-paper shell are in place, the next step is a layer of white glue. First, I put masking tape over the tracks and other features I needed to protect from the glue. I use straight Elmer’s white glue from a giant bottle I bought at a local office supply store. It helps to pour a little bit in a portable paint cup for easy access. I used a paint brush (approx. 1.5″ wide designed for house painting) to apply a thick layer of white glue over all the red rosin paper. If your paper layers aren’t tight, expect a little dripping, so be sure to clear out anything valuable from underneath first. When the glue is drying, it saturates the paper causing some unexpected wrinkles–I was worried at first, but most of these disappeared when the glue dried, and those that remained looked like pretty natural variations in the landscape. In places where the paper edges were warping up and away from the layer underneath, I brushed an extra layer of glue underneath and smoothed things back down with a finger.

Spackling the joints
After applying a layer of glue and letting it dry, I apply lightweight spackling compound to the paper seams to smooth out the edges

Once the glue dried completely, I added a step that Howard Zane does not: spackling the seams. I wasn’t happy with the edges of the paper as there were distinct lines that wouldn’t look natural with just paint. Additionally, there were a few areas that I needed to be completely flat, but they still had some undulations from the glue step. To fix this, I turned to one of my favorite materials: lightweight spackling compound that I picked up from the local hardware store. This is the same compound I use to cover screw holes and hide joints in masonite fascia and backdrops. It’s about the consistency of icing, and you just spread it on in batches using a plastic putty knife to smooth things out as best you can. Once it dried overnight, I used a wet washcloth to rub down the edges of the spackling compound and to taper it into the surrounding paper. This rewets the compound and allows you to get a smooth surface without sanding. Most of the seams were hidden after the first application, but a few areas required a second or third application to get the shape right.

Smoothing the spackling compound
Once the spackling compound dries, I use a wet washcloth to gently smooth the spackling compound to remove rough edges and blend it into the paper

Now things were finally ready for some paint! A friend of mine graciously donated a fine bucket of dark Kentucky dirt to me a while ago (a kingly gift!). I went to the hardware store and found a paint color that matched the dirt color pretty closely and had a gallon made in flat/matte finish. Back on the layout, I applied some of this color thickly with a small brush to about a one square foot area. Using a spoon, I sprinkled some of the sifted dirt onto the paint to give the scenery a little base texture. I left about an inch of the paint uncovered to avoid getting dirt on the paintbrush. Quickly moving to the next section, I painted some more and added more dirt, starting with the seam between the areas as it was the closest to drying. Eventually, the whole surface was covered. Once the paint had dried a little, I gently sprayed a layer of wet glue (about 10 parts water, 1 part glue, with a little dish soap) on top of the dirt. In the few areas where it washed away the dirt, I simply added more to the soaked surface and sprayed again.

Dirt on wet paint
I spread thick paint on about one square foot of paper at a time, then I sprinkle with dirt while it’s still wet

Once everything dried. I removed the masking tape and touched up any areas as needed. While there’s still a lot more work to go before the scenery is complete, I’m really happy with this technique to get to a good scenery base that looks a whole lot better than either plywood or raw red rosin paper! I won’t finish the scenery until the upper deck is complete to avoid ruining anything with sawdust and scenery materials raining down, but this current layer is resilient enough (and able to be vacuumed) to withstand the construction of the upper deck.

Finished base scenery in St Charles
Another view of the base scenery in St Charles looking toward the gap where the tracks descend to Appalachia staging

 

A Very Productive Day

More Backdrops - Lower Level Overview
Here’s a look at last Saturday’s progress including finishing most of the lower level scenery base and painting the rest of the backdrop

I had a happy aligning of the stars on Saturday where my wife was gone for the day, I didn’t have any big “chores” to do, and I had just learned how to paint backdrops! All that combined into a day spent furiously trying to finish up the lower-level scenery forms so I could paint the rest of the lower-level backdrop. It was a good day, and I’m pretty happy with the results. I learned that the painting is my favorite part, roughing in the scenery with cardboard strips is my second favorite, and papering over the cardboard with section after section of red rosin paper is a distant third. Round 2 of backdrop painting went a little smoother than round 1 as I think I had a better grasp of the techniques, and the paint brushes seemed to work better on their second use. I liked the results of round 2 so much I went back and redid some sections of round 1.

More Backdrops - St Charles
The St Charles Local traverses the wye with the newly painted backdrop. It will soon descend through the backdrop in the corner, a hole much tougher to spot now

The scenery covers over the hidden track along the back wall that joins St Charles and the Mayflower section, so I decided to do a test run… I can now verify that I can indeed – by twisting at odd angles, reaching into small gaps, and fishing it out the last couple feet with a long string of hoppers – free a stuck train from the most remote part of my hidden track! Lesson learned–when you use hot glue for scenery, it tends to leave a lot of strings hanging down, and go figure, locomotives don’t pick up electricity so well when their wheels are covered in bits of glue string! A little wheel cleaning and some extra sweeps of the hand through the area (again at odd angles via small gaps), and trains now traverse this area nicely.

More Backdrops - back corner
Where the two lower-level scenes transition–the backdrop on the right is lower than the left, hence less blue sky

I’ve only got one section left that still needs a backdrop and scenery forms, over the helix from staging. Painting the backdrop in the corner was the big barrier to adding this, so that will likely be the next step, and the LAST step before building upper-level benchwork… it’s getting pretty real.

More Backdrops - Into the Helix
Here’s where trains will leave the lower level and enter the helix to the upper level–I think the backdrop painting along with a few trees will hide the transition well

Let There Be… Green!

Painting Backdrops 3
The finished scene showing the brighter foreground trees painted with yellow and mars black mix–what a difference the painted backdrop makes for the scene!

I collected art supplies to paint my backdrops many months ago, but like any project that intimidates me, they sat around in a drawer until I could get up the nerve to pull the trigger. I’ve done one painting my entire life about 30 years ago for an art class, so my experience level with this is just a hair above zero. I’d like to thank Jeff Kraker who sent me a link to a video series by Chris Lyon he followed on how to paint backdrops using a few basic acrylic colors and an impressionistic “blob” method. I learned a TON from this five-part series including the fact that you shouldn’t actually use green paint–how counter-intuitive is that? Having watched the series twice and armed with supplies, I finally jumped in! As you can see in the pictures, I’m no Michelangelo, but I’m happy with them for now, and I’m sure I’ll make some adjustments and touch-ups as I gain more experience.

Painting Backdrops 1
Step 1 is to outline the distant ridges in chalk, and step 2 is to paint the distant ridges a bluish gray

My first step is to outline the top of the distant ridges. I actually used a low angle view from Google Earth to do this, so the basic contours are actually what you’d see standing in the actual scene. Kid’s sidewalk chalk is a good medium for this as it can be easily erased with a wet wash cloth. Next I painted my distant ridges–this was something the series didn’t cover as all their scenery was closer. One thing I wanted to do was to nail the color of distant hills. I live in the mountains, so every day I get to see that distant hills covered in trees are not green at all–they’re a shade of gray-blue, almost purple. To get a color close to this, I mixed some of my sky blue backdrop color with a little mars black, and a little cerulean blue which looks about right to me, though if anything, they’re not purple enough. I applied the paint using the techniques in the videos, just wet the brush (A No 10 round in this case) and dab, dab, dab, blob, blob, blob. I didn’t want distinct trees in the distance, so I mixed the paint pretty good, leaving just a little variation and shading.

Painting Backdrops 2
Once the distant ridge is in, step 3 is to paint the next nearest ridge a little darker but still not bright green

Next, I added some primary yellow to the palette and started moving to the second ridgeline, still using a good bit of the sky blue but now adding more yellow which makes a nice Woodland Scenics-ish green when mixed with the mars black. Once the second ridge was in, I felt it didn’t have enough definition, so I dabbed the brush in some mars black and touched the base color without mixing it in and “blobbed” in some shadows. Finally I transitioned to the larger trees near the bottom. No sky blue, just a lot of yellow and a little mars black barely mixed and blob, blob, blob, again adding some areas of shadow with a little more black in the mix.

Painting Backdrops Corner
This is the one hard corner of backdrop on the layout–I think once I play with the lighting it will be a little less stark

The result is what you see here. It’s certainly no real art, and it doesn’t look nearly as nice as the backdrops in the video. Still, I think it gives a decent impression of a deciduous forest and Appalachian ridges that doesn’t distract from the foreground. I also think the color will blend pretty well with common light and medium green ground foam and foliage. I did about 15′ of linear backdrop in under 2 hours… not a bad return on time invested. I love what it does to the layout feel, as well. For the first time since I started building the layout, when you walk into the layout room it feels Appalachian. Looking forward to painting more and improving on my bare-bones techniques!