My suggestion is to find a pic with the sky coluor you like and take it down to a paint store and have it mixed? Here is a picture showing the coluor of my backdrop
I used cloud wallpaper for my backdrop. But my backdrop, at least on three sides of my layout is the wall of the room. Pictures can be seen on my website.
Hi Tigerman, For sky blue, I would suggest a soft or pale shade of blue (the one colonel used look nice) you can brush diluted white or very light grey to simulate haze but go very carefully. Some people have suggested that darker blue look better for photography, but I respectfully disagree. As long as our backdrops are a few inches high, I think we can try to duplicate the "lower" part of sky, which is usually paler than the rest (atmospheric haze) I also strongly suggest to keep any 2 D landscape representation low (2 to 4 inches high) to avoid the "mountain wall" effect. In a recent article, David Barrow said that, if he was to begin a layout now, he would use a lower 2 D landscape. I think he is right. Hope this helps, marc
I think you will want a very lite blue for the higher parts of the backdrop, and graduly darken it as it meets the horizion line. Take some samples down to the train room and look at them under your lighting. Otherwise you might get something totally off.................Mike
I just visited an Open House in the area, and what the modeler has done for a backdrop looks great! He bought some Walthers rural backdrops. They were too short for his wall, but he cut off the sky from on top of the trees, mountains, houses, and whatever. He then painted his wall with a color that was "sorta like" the old backdrop sky. He mounted the land part of the backdrop onto the wall with wallpaper paste. Then he cut out the clouds from the sky portion of the "discarded" backdrop and pasted them randomly across his painted sky. Man, it looks GREAT!!! I'm finally beginning to understand that whatever you do on your layout, if you think it looks good ... IT AIN'T WRONG .... !!!!! (It only took 66 years to understand this concept )
Hank, I tried a similar setup with cutouts. Each one was glued to a stick to stand out away from the wall an inch. Others over-lapped these by another inch. The illusion actually gave depth of field as visitors moved around the room. All the backdrop scenes were mounted 3" above the track level back there, because one of my return loops ran in the space taken up by the backdrops. Derails (two in 8 years) were reached between the buildup scenery, and under the backdrop. This loop could not be seen until you leaned over the layout while standing up, so was mostly hidden. I plan on a similar setup on this new layout.
For back drop sky color, I use the blue foam board for it.. Its already a light blue in color, and is bendable for going around corners being my layout is in the basement and also in a corner. And then use water based flat white paint to pain on the clouds.... A misted slightly darker blue feathered into the blue foam to meet the horizon, with the clouds then painted on it. I run my back drop all the way to the ceiling... I don't get into trying to match the blue paints for the sky color. The blue foam board on one side has no markings and thats the side to use! I get the 1/2 inch blue foam board for this... Don't get it to thin if your going to bend it around corners... It won't take the stress and break! [ 24 December 2001: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ]
