As predicted,  I repainted some clouds over the hills…twice.. and I think I have something I’m happy with now.

I’m almost scared to try painting in a backdrop hill in fear of messing up my lovely blue sky and clouds!

Shaun Previous Layout

Ever since I painted the hills on backdrop, I was never really happy with how they turned out.  The color of the backdrop even started to look too grey to me.  So Friday I started the process of overhauling the backdrop.

I started with the lower level near the end and at the river crossing .  I first repainted the whole area a new shade of blue, Quiet Splendor from Ace Hardware using a 4″ roller.  While the blue was still wet, I used a 2″ brush and brushed Bright White (also Ace brand) at the bottom and worked my way up about halfway.  Since the blue was still wet, the white blended in with it to give a nice horizon effect, and faded nicely to the darker original blue toward the top.  You can see a huge difference between the new color and old color now.

The next step was to add clouds.  Again, while the blue is still wet you use the same brush as before but use a stipple motion (basically, just tapping the tip of the brush on the backdrop) to blotch clouds on the background. Go heavy on the top and then lighter on the bottom to get a sense of depth, and soften the cloud a little.  You can layer clouds to for more dimensional effect.

I think the ones over the river bridge came out better than the ones over the hill, so I might redo that section again (for the 3rd time, heh).

Overall though, a huge improvement over the previous look.  I still want to paint a hill on it with some better tress but it’ll be a lower hill than before, and more of a tan-ish color.

Shaun Previous Layout

Thursday night and Friday I made some additions to the terrain on the lower level.

First I added a small hill to the foreground at the end of the lower level, and then a hill along the backdrop at the the same spot.  It really helps fill the scene I think nto having all that flat space.

Then moving to a right to one of the corners:  I didn’t like this sharp drop the hill had, so I added some terrain to give it a more gradual slope down.

And the same for one the banks along the river.

Shaun Previous Layout

Tonight I finally got around to replacing the Digitrax Zephyr unit that was in the wiring panel with a Digitrax DCS100 Booster.

I’ll be using a Astron RS-7A (13v 5/7A) power supply I had sitting around to power it.

Shaun Previous Layout