Sunday, August 22, 2010

Backscene 1 - Signals 0

In my last post I was about to install the new signals that Dale Richards made for me and I thought that this was the next logical step, wrong!
I realised that I neeeded to paint the backscenes along the garage doors before I could safely install the signals at the branch junction as I would have to remove the backscene panels for painting as it was too far to lean across the Bylong station section below.
Oh well, we can't always do what we want when we want to can we?
I had investigated the paints I needed to use a little while ago and these were made by Jo Sonja and could be found in craft stores (of the female persuasion) but also at Bunnings. Jo Sonja makes a range of paints called 'Background Colours' and from these I used the following, Sky Blue for distant blue hills, a mix of Sky Blue and Forest Green for shading the blue hills, Oak Moss and Forest Green for distant wooded hills, Oak Moss for distant grassy hills, then Vellum and Willow mixtures, some with a little Forest Green for closer fields.
I used my digital projector to project a suitable long panorama scene I had taken in the NSW countryside onto the backscene and then sketched in the horizon, mountains, hill lines and foreground features, etc with a 6B pencil.
After trying out my painting techniques on a small piece of previously sky painted backscene I held my breath and started earlier this week.
Here are some pictures of the result.
Now I worked out the horizon by looking at the projected picture as roughly my eye height which seems to work pretty well in the above photos but here is a 3/4 view of a train on the grade to the upper staging and it certainly doesn't work from this view, looks like you can't have it both ways which is one of life's little rules.
Also note the way that the foreshortened view causes the hills and mountains to become peaked. The only way to reduce this is to paint your hills and mountains very long horizontally if you understand what I mean.
A comparison with older photos will show that I have matched the colours of the old backscene reasonably well but without the misty effect I achieved with a can of grey primer sometime back.

5 comments:

James McInerney said...

Wow! Looks fabulous! Can't wait to see it 'in the flesh'. The layout just keeps getting better and better!

WATTLE FLAT said...

The first photo has come up a real treat. The colours have worked really well. Fantastic work, trully inspirational. Darren

Gary Laker said...

I'll second James' comments Ray and chuck in a second Wow! You just keep raising the bar my friend. But that's a good thing ;-)

GL

Shelton D'Cruz said...

yes fantastic work there - looks so real - and a timely post as I was looking at what paint to use for a backdrop.

Cheers
Shelton

Ray P said...

Thanks boys, much appreciated.
You know, I think that the hills at the Wollar flour mill end are too high, I might have to repaint that end.
I will have to have a hard think about it though.

Ray P