I painted my own background!

     I took the plunge.  After a lot of procrastination, I went ahead and painted my own background and to my horror I filmed a how to video for YouTube.  In the cold midwestern winter I got the paints out, drawing pencils and with a dose of courage I went to the train room and started the job of painting.  I shot the video as I went along. 

    It is a good idea to paint your background before making ch of the layout is started so your elbows and belly don’t break things. But there is an advantage to procrastinating, you have existing scenery to match your background with and your not painting more than than you need to. 

   The key thing is using primer.  Don't skip it!  Paint does not stick to Masonite like regular drywall.  It easily scratches and believe me you will scratch it.  so do yourself a favor and buy primer and paint the whole board (good added protection against humidity).  The next peice of advice is to paint the white haze coat while the blue sky coat is still wet.  Apply the white paint from the bottom in sweeping horizontal coats toward the middle of your sky.  the brush should be getting dry by the time you get to the middle.  

    Its helpful to understand how light and shadow works to be able to paint a convincing backdrop.  The idea is to determine what direction your fictional sun is coming from(mine is coming from the left), the part that is facing the sun directly will be the brightest, the side that is away from the sun (the opposite side that is facing the sun) will be the darkest. Then you have light bouncing off other surfaces like another building or the floor or something else, this will be dark but not as dark.  Here is a video explaining it better than I can.  

    The mountains and the sky came out well enough but the toughest part for me are the clouds.  My past efforts did not result in fluffy convincing clouds they looked like marshmallows.  So, with some trepidations I will paint them and shoot a video showing messing it up.  In the meantime, enjoy this short video on how I got started.  

        Here is part 2 of the video.  I painted the clouds and distant buildings.  It has done a lot to improve the sense of distance of the layout.  Well for now I have to paint more sky, clouds and lots and lots of buildings.