Backscene and half-relief trees
One of the benefits of working on a painted backscene, as opposed to a digital one, is that it's relatively straightforward to make changes, either big or small. Looking at the pics I've posted earlier in this blog, I decided that the background hills needed to be pushed back a little more to suggest greater distance and haze. Working with the airbrush is tricky due to the height of the layout, so I decided to try and desaturate the hills using a wash of dilute white applied with a very wide artist's brush, kindly loaned by my wife on the strict understanding I'd give it a good clean afterwards. The brush was a quality one so there was no danger of bristles coming off, which can happen with cheaper versions.
I brushed broad parallel strokes, taking care not to load the brush too heavily - I didn't want dilute white running down over the existing scenery - and then went back over it as it dried, to reduce obvious brushmarks.
Once that was one, I had to go back over some of the foreground stuff on the backscene to reinstate it, emphasizing the difference between the distant hills and the relatively nearby trees.
At Trainwest, I'd bought some nice half-relief trees from the nice lady on the Ceynix stand:
http://www.railwaytrees.co.uk/
These were too good to resist, especially as I had been looking to add some low-relief trees along the back of the scenery behind the station building. However, I expected to have problems with shadows on the backscene, one solution of which is to paint additional trees to soak up the shadows from the "real" ones. These don't have to be Constable-level masterpieces; it's sufficient to give a suggestion of further growth. Provided the painted hues aren't miles off the modelled trees, the effect will be OK from most viewing angles. One trick is not to use greens straight from the tube, but to add in a bit of red - this will help the finished greens look less vivid.
Here, the tree to the right of Ivo's Bentley is a Ceynix half-relief one, with the painted trees in the background masking the shadows. The purple-brown tree leaning in on the left in the immediate foreground is also from Ceynix, giving an idea of the quality of these models. In the picture above, I also added two smaller Ceynix trees immediately behind the railway station. I could happily add more of these as time and funds allow, bearing in mind that trees aren't cheap. But I think they are worth the investment, especially as my own efforts aren't up to the same quality.
Cheers and thanks for reading.
ps - a diesel for Naturol.
- 10
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