Summer module - backscene
Entry posted by Barry Ten
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The summer module is getting on for four feet deep in one corner, so I need to have completed any fiddly work at the back before working forward to the front. In fact, part of the layout is still be bolted into place and once that's in, it will be hard to get to the back right corner at all. With that in mind, now has been the time to take care of the backscene.
I used a photographic backscene on the spring module, but the two I've done since then have both been painted directly onto a rigid surface using acrylic paints. Partly this is down to the fact that, while they can look amazingly good, I personally find photographic backscenes a little hard to work with; it's difficult to apply them without getting smudges and wrinkles in awkward places, and for the Spring module I felt that I needed to do so much work with an airbrush to tone the backscene down, that it wouldn't have been much harder to do it all by hand in the first place. I've also found photographic backscenes to be quite vulnerable to accidental damage. The Spring module, for instance, has ended up with a few splatters incurred while working on other scenic elements, and these have needed to be covered by painted trees. A painted backscene, provided it's on a rigid backing, such as MDF or plastic, can be reworked and corrected as many times as you like - you can even sand it back down to the start and begin again if it all goes totally wrong. The other reason for not using photographic backscenes, though - and to be honest the main one - is purely an aesthetic preference. I sort of like the fact that it doesn't look like a photograph, if that makes any sense at all. And I've seen some cracking painted backscenes over the years, ranging from the brilliant work on the Totnes and Ashburton layouts, to the amazing work on Fencehouses, as seen in the current MRJ. The key, it seems, is to keep the colours nice and de-saturated and get a convincing transition between the backscene and the real 3-d scenic work.
I've used acrylics and oils for backscene work but generally, acrylics are the easier option since they dry fairly quickly, but not so quickly that you can't blend them. Using a rigid backscene means you can keep the paint nice and wet with no fear of cockling. I painted the sky with a mixture of cerulean blue and titanium white, using a dabbing motion with a stiff brush to create the clouds. I added a touch of yellow to the clouds, strengthening the effect to the right of the backscene (no photos of that bit as yet).
My first attempt foreground scenery wasn't very acceptable, but the beauty of acrylics is that you can over-paint very easily. To create the hills and distant tree lines, I mixed up some pale blue-green hues, while deepening the colour intensity for the elements closer to the foreground. I added some umber into the green for the closest elements, so that the hue looked similar to the drab medium green of Woodland Scenics foliage clumps.
Here's the work in progress:
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