Making a moody sky photographic backscene for my model railway layout - April 2021 Layout Update

welcome to chandwell so it's april and i thought it was about time that i've got my vaccine done i'm going to use 3d ultra low relief buildings for the most part but i need some sky behind those buildings so i've walked up here to the highest point near where i live up here on beautiful ilkey mall i've got 360 degree view into the distance on all sides so i'm going to use my phone and try and get a panoramic photograph of the clouds as you know the sun doesn't shine in chandwell and there's a lovely grey overcast grim sort of chandler day when i left but now the sun's come out and the sky is blue so it might not exactly be the effect that i was after but i'm going to give it a go anyway the sun is really bright at the moment i don't think this is going to work [Music] that doesn't look too bad maybe it will work after all let's go back get it into inkscape and have a look [Music] i really wanted chandra to sit on the lead and drizzly sky i also felt it important that the back seam does not dominate the layout so i wanted it to be quite subtle once i got home it was clear that i'd captured some beautiful skies but they were far bluer and far more beautiful than anyone in chandler's ever seen i used lightroom on my ipad to desaturate the blues decrease the contrast and slightly blur the clouds this only took a few minutes once i got it right on one photo i quickly copied the settings to all of the others i brought the panorama pictures into inkscape and i started to arrange them into a shape that matches my backseat i'm used to working in sub-millimeter measurements in inkscape but i needed this rectangle to be something like 4500 millimeters long by 490 high i scaled the sky pictures to the right height and this showed me how many i'd need side by side to cover the full layout i didn't want visible joins obviously so i used rectangles with graduated black to white fills as masks this made it easy to blend one sky into the next in a seamless manner i used oval fills as masks on some clouds to allow me to quickly overlay these individually here and there where i needed them just basically covering up the big bright blue patches finally i added a semi-transparent gray rectangle over the whole thing i faded this out towards the left in an attempt to hint at the sky getting bluer as you reach the tunnels above baker's hill which as you know leads to nicer places i'd say the overall effect works really well i'm really pleased with a subtle hint of nicer places beyond chandwell chandwell is in my garage and although one wall is plastered the other two are bare block so i stuck a spare bit of wood onto this wall with no more nails i didn't have enough wood or no more nails to do the other side so i tried sticking sheets of two millimeter grey board to the wall using cheap pva glue i had a tendency to curl away from the wall so i constructed towers of books to hold it in place while the glue dried holding the edges in place with parcel tape this works surprisingly well and i have a nice surface to stick the back seam to [Music] i used inkscape to create a template which would make the most of an a4 sticky label i measured the margins of the label and drew a rectangle slightly within this so if the paper didn't go through exactly correct i wouldn't overshoot the margins i added these black guidelines just outside the rectangle to help me line up my ruler when the time came to cut out the card i duplicated the rectangle enough times to cover the whole sky image then using clipping it was very easy to create one page jigsaw pieces clip copy drag save as pdf delete unclip clip copy drag save as pdf and repeat almost 40 times i printed the jigsaw pieces onto a4 labels on the basic print setting i gently rolled them onto sheets of half millimeter gray card [Music] once stuck i used the guidelines i showed earlier to help line up my ruler i kept the blade turned inwards to give me the best chances of being able to put the resulting pieces together without too much of a seam showing [Music] i wanted the corners of the back seam to be curved so as to avoid any harsh lines in the sky i soon noticed that bending a completed piece caused the printed label to bubble and crease so that was no good we overcame this by slicing lines in the card all the way through except at the very edges when the label was stuck and then the edges trimmed off this gave me a label stuck to many individual strips of card which was really really simple to curve i stuck a base of half millimeter card to the wall just using a very thin strip of ooh the back scene is very light so it doesn't need any more than this and although it's just my garage i don't want to destroy the whole wall if i ever need to remove the back seam i then just used ooh again and carefully smoothed the tiles onto the card wall covering taking my time to put the edges together as best as i could there's very little definition in these clouds so i had to be careful i was getting them the right way around i cut the card into strips and worked my way around the cable trunking i briefly considered trying to curve the card round but i thought that the shadows of a bulge would look worse than a defined line in the sky so i stuck with this approach as i tiled my way around i started to get quite excited that the effect was starting to work out once i got towards the baker's hill end i had some landscape to contend with i cut the card as closely to the contour of the land that i could manage i've hidden the base down here with some bushes and it's worked out quite well this large box in the corner which carries the plumbing from upstairs can't do much about so i decided to curve the card on the two outward facing corners and just leave it as one right angle on this bit here it doesn't look too bad and i think it was the right decision i've not yet decided what to do with charlotte lane some kind of perspective picture of a road going to the distance probably so i'm finished what do you think i really like the effect it's much much better than the bare walls i'm occasionally not as accurate as i would like to be with a knife and some of the butt joints are a little messier than the others but they aren't too noticeable and they certainly don't ruin the effect for me i am a little bit worried about the colour fastness these cheap labels don't seem to hold the ink as well as my usual photo paper and any moisture seems to cause the ink to run and bleed i'll have to varnish the whole thing but so far i have not found a varnish that is matte enough my usual ak interactive varnish which i love would cost far too much for such a large surface i've heard good things about windsor and newton artist matt if you have any suggestions please let me know in the comments or drop me an email at hello at chandwell.uk depending on how i light the clouds i can represent a light but gray day or a dark and stormy drizzly day and as for the seams you can definitely see them but if you don't mind cheating then they're as simple to remove as dragging a finger across an ipad screen so photos are taking my layout from now on will have the grey cloudy sky that really characterizes chandwell the clouds are intentionally a bit blurry and their lower contrast makes them blend into the background not being full of bright colors and stark contrast they don't overpower the layout and by blending into the background they fulfill their purpose of being a backdrop to the main thing which is the town of chandwell the backseat will eventually have low relief buildings along the bottom which will really set it off well the abandoned attempt with the layers of bradford photos give a hint as to how well this may end up working i've really enjoyed making this back scene and i'm pleased it's finally done if you found this video useful please give it a thumbs up using the button below this really does encourage me to continue making channel videos and sharing my layout and its progress with you it's back to my station building next now that this guy is done i can get it fixed into place and the roof added hopefully i'll have a video on this in the next few weeks and i've got a growing list of your inkscape questions to answer too so watch out for my next video until then thank you for watching stay safe and i'll see you next time

Channel: Chandwell

Views: 4,290

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Id: rKqjPTNJrT8

Length: 8min 40sec (520 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021