Painting Backdrops for Model Railroads

Backdrops is one of the key things you can do to a model railroad. It adds realism, and depth, and dimension and also sets it in its place in time along with the structures and rolling stock and vehicles. I'm going to show, be showing you and sharing with you some tips and techniques today, on a, technique that I use, for blending blue and white together. Once your backdrop is created, and primed, and ready for paint, first step is buying the paint. There's a lot of different blues. A lot of people will take some chips from the store and go outside and try to match it to the sky. I've done the same thing. However, I'm going to recommend that we go one shade, darker, a blue. The reason for that is that we'll be blending white with the blue, with the light in the sky and also the blue will a, photograph better, videotape better and actually makes a better backdrop for the trains. What you're doing is you're setting a theatrical set and letting the trains, be the actress to that set. The next step is to buy the paint, latex paint, the cheapest paint you can buy. Needs to be flat. It doesn't have to be durable paint it won't be scrubbed, it won't be, marked with crayons by your kids and have to clean it all up. You just want to find the paint that's the right color, and make sure it's flat. You want any reflections cause with all the lighting that's on a model railroad, you do not want a, reflections coming off your backdrop. We're gonna start with the blue. There we go. Loading up the roller here, some blue. Move this out of my way. The backdrop preparation is key. This is Masonite. Now there's a number of different materials that people, have used. Masonite is inexpensive. It bends easily around corners and it's perfectly flat which makes it a real nice backdrop. Some people prefer styrene. The reason for that being is that styrene doesn't shrink. Masonite, in weather changes, humidity changes, if your room has any, change in temperature and humidity throughout the year, it does form cracks. And there's really not too much you can do about it. Unlike dry wall, that you can tape seams, Masonite doesn't have a beveled edge but normally the cracks are not very visible. What I'm doing here is trying to get a nice even, coat of blue. The key for this technique is to get a lot of paint on. We'll be painting, the white, while the blue is still wet. So we don't want the blue to dry too rapidly. Let's get a nice even color. Make sure you don't get ridges. It's just like painting your living room. I'm using a small roller because the backdrop I'm painting here is only four feet long, certainly in a bigger room you'd want to use a bigger role or just to cover more space. What's nice about this technique is once you get the blue down, if you do too much and you can't complete it, it doesn't hurt to have the blue as the backdrop. The white is a, you can always give it a second coat of blue and work your, your blending and your clouds in. There we go that looks pretty good. Just smoothing out the last little bit here. Once your blue is up, we're going to pour some white and work with the white. This can be any white. This happens to be sealing white, which is nice and bright. And that seems to work pretty well. Now I will be applying this with a brush rather than a roller. I'm going to load up my brush, good with white. And I'm going to start at the bottom and actually work towards the top. Now you're going to know that your brush is going to get filled with blue paint because the blue is still wet. That's all right. That's part of the technique. As I move up the white and blue blend together Move this out of the way. Now depending on how high your backdrop is you can blend quite a ways up. This is a two by four foot backdrop, and I'm going to go about halfway up. Now I'm going to add the clouds. There's a lot of different ways to add clouds to the sky. Some modelers will choose a stencil and spray paint white. I've always found those a little hard-edged and this is a way to blend it in which I feel a subtler, and more realistic. The blue is still wet. We blended it. I'm going to start by stippling. Stippling is the technique where I'm actually using the tip of the brush and applying it, instead of painting with the bristles of a brush. And I'm going to get some white on there. And then I'm going to spread it out a little bit. How big to make your clouds? Clouds are quite large in the sky. Sometimes they fill the whole sky. Sometimes they're, they're quite small. So you've got a lot of leeway and a lot of latitude here. You'll note that I'm starting at the top of the clouds and kind of blending them in on the bottom. Top of the cloud then, has the contrast against the blue sky, and on the bottom it blends in. And I find that so very realistic technique. You can make clouds, some depth to your clouds by making the clouds that are actually closer to you if you will. Use more white, and that actually make them a little bit larger I'm going to make the cloud that I'm painting right now in front of the cloud I previously painted. Again, I'm stippling, clouds don't have the hard edges, and then I can use the brush and blend it a little bit in the inside of the cloud. Now the thing that'll really make these clouds realistic once they get to this point is when I come back in to the clouds I've already painted, and I add some highlights, inside. So there's some clouds in front of clouds. You're going to reach a point where the blue starts to dry and the technique doesn't work as well anymore. At that point, just stop. You can always repaint the blue, pick up where you left off and blend the two scenes together. That's not a problem. It's actually quite easy to do. This wet on wet technique is a great way to get realistic skies. I hope you'll try it on your layout.