I wanted the overall effect of the layout to be a somewhat dreary urban scene. Somehow the idea of the bright blue skies that one so often sees on backdrops didn't seem appropriate.

I settled on grey, but do you know how many shades of grey there are!

The backdrop its self was made from hardboard. It's held up with simple batons screwed into the back of the baseboard framework.

I thought it would be very easy to get the shade of grey too dark, but my first attempt was way too light. You can see this in the photos. My attempts at painting clouds also ended in disaster. So I ended up with graduated shades of grey, which hopefully will portray an overcast, dull day.

I have to say I'm not very happy with the result. The real sky doesn't have right angles for a start. Not being able to paint clouds was a drawback, and the featureless backscene doesn't look too good IMHO. Since one of the purposes of the layout is for me to learn and improve I decided to go with it for the time being and either come back to it later if I was struck by inspiration or to just do it differently on my next layout.