{"id":179,"date":"2001-04-28T10:34:16","date_gmt":"2001-04-28T09:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/?p=179"},"modified":"2014-11-22T10:18:47","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T09:18:47","slug":"dock-module-painting-the-backdrop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/dock-module-painting-the-backdrop\/","title":{"rendered":"Dock Module: Painting the Backdrop"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a design in mind, I started by painting the backdrop. I did this before putting in the basic foreground scenery structure because the foreground would make it difficult to paint the distant hills.<\/p>\n

I followed the approach outlined in Dave Frary’s “Realistic Model Railroad Scenery” book. First I painted the sky; then I added a line of distant trees. I used cheap flat acrylic paints picked up at the local Michael’s arts and craft store and used a simple foam brush for both:<\/p>\n

\"Backdrop<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s a picture of the module with these two areas painted in:<\/p>\n

\"Mocking<\/a><\/p>\n

The cardboard mockups are standing in for the station\/warehouse building at the dock and the water tank. I then added a second line of distant trees on top of the first line. This second line of trees was a slightly more intense green that the first. I also used a little spray of flat white enamel at this point to increase the illusion of distance.<\/p>\n

Finally, I switched to a bristle brush and followed the Hales’ method of painting trees as described in recent issues of Railroad Model Craftsman: you just get a little bit of paint on the end of the bristle brush and just daub it onto the backdrop. This works very well for recreating Ontario forests. I squeezed out several shades of green onto my palette (a margarine tub lid) and then mixed different shades for blotting. I finally went back with a fine brush and some grey \/ white \/ black paint and painted on some tree trucks. There are a fair number of white birch trees in this area and I wanted to capture them on the backdrop.<\/p>\n

I’m pretty pleased about how the backdrop turned out. It looks great without a lot of work. Here’s the east end of the module:<\/p>\n

\"Painted<\/a><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I did not match the colours of the backdrop to the ground foam I was using and later on had to go back and repaint the trees. I strongly recommend purchasing your ground foam early and matching the backdrop colours to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a design in mind, I started by painting the backdrop. I did this before putting in the basic foreground scenery structure because the foreground would make it difficult to paint the distant hills. I…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pmtco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stationstudios.ca\/trains\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}