I’ve had great advice from some of my MRRForums buddies on the subject of backdrops. One recommended the following threads:
An example of Troel’s excellent sky is:
I’m happy with the tone ie type of my blue but it’s so in your face. I spent last night looking at photos of my visit to New England last year. Admittedly it rained and looked grey most days but there was one glorious day on which I took the photos further up this topic. Those clouds would be perfect.
My last backdrop was grey – I kid you not.
I thought that I would be best modelling the scenery and time of year that I actually went so I could use some of the 1800 photos that I took.
Hence I am now trying to find a blue sky… My first paint colour was still to grey, this at least is the right type of blue but too strong. What I’ll do next is print the best cloud photos from my visit, print that excellent Railroad-line topic (well some of it – it’s 195 pages long), mock in my hills a little better so I know where the horizon will be and finally get out the white paint and start mixing it up! As there are hills all around, I might not go down to totally white at the bottom but I am definitely going to lighten it all up.
Troels’ thread blew me away so I’m going to spend this evening (after modelling time) reading through the whole lot. His sky is really inspirational and so much better than the bland blue I was thinking of.
That’s why I love the forums so much – it takes you down new avenues – with photos to boot!
I will go upstairs this evening and start planning rolling hills in 18″ deep benchwork. I’m planning to use forest in a flash (sea foam) on chicken wire as recommended by the chap at Green Scene. I will probably colour it with a slight bluish tint to denote distance. I’m now keeping an eye on my garden for potential weapons of mass tree production.