How do you blend sky on background posters??


RexHea

RAIL BENDER
I decided to try Scenic Express backgrounds on the new extension that I built for my layout. They are 13"x38" photo prints of actual scenes on card stock and are really nice, but (Yeah, there is always a but.) the sky color tones vary quite a bit from one poster to another.
I am looking for suggestions on how to get a good color transition between the posters. I have thought about an air brush and trying to match a common color, but I'm not sure if this is the best way or if I would be able to keep from spraying the buildings. My skills at air brushing are ok for general painting, but far from being an expert.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Wow, I totaly missed this thread this morning, I only went and looked because of the WPF thread. I like how they look, they don't even loof blatently fake.
 
Josh: They are actual photo prints of real stuff. Very beautiful and detailed.

I now know what I should have done with these things from the beginning. Because I am using so many (8), it is near impossible to blend the skies together (the two city posters are a match, 76"). Thanks to another modeler (Mondo) to reinforce my thoughts, I should have cut out the building,factories, and etc., and then mounted them on foam board, precisely trimmed the foam board to the photos and then placed in the scene. I did this to some Walthers cutouts, but because these posters are so nice I thought I could blend them in and save the integrity of the picture. WRONG!:(

To make all this worse, I have already glued them to the backdrop board and guess what...they don't pull off without tearing. So, now I have to start all over. I will just log it out to a learning experience, smile while quietly cursing, and then get busy with ordering some more and reworking the back boards. One good thing is Scenic Express will ship your order the same day they receive it if early enough to catch UPS. The last time took an unbelievable two days.
A big smile to 'ya!
 
Man that stinks, sometimes the learning curve is steep and often times its EXPENSIVE! Hopefully this doesnt burn your pocket too much. Im with Josh I like the way they look but thats looking @ photos not the real thing where you can everything into view ya know?
 
Yeah Scott, the photo post I made look real good. But, I was careful to only take single poster shots. If you saw a panoramic view, then the problem would be obvious. There are obvious seams and color changes from one to the other. Too bad that Scenic Express doesn't try to match these better because they are so much better than the cartoon looking type.;) :)
 
Well Josh, I can't using the poster skies. Maybe an artist could, but certainly not me. Now Scenic Express could if they used a Photo editing program and lightened or darkened them. After you have cut out the buildings and factories out of the poster and mounted them on the Foam Board, then you can place them any where you want against a self painted sky. Remember that the foam board is trimmed to follow the precise outline of the buildings. In effect, you are making them slightly 3 diminsional...using 3/16ths foam board...throwing away the poster sky.
I have done this with Walthers and it really looks good. The problem I face is trying to cut out around all the detail. I am sure to loose some. With the city scene, you can cut out the entire group of building and treat them as one or cut the individual ones and arrange them the way you want.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I just looked at the Scenic Express web site, they have some really nice stuff, I see what you mean trying to match the sky. It sounds like your onto a good answer though.

I'll need a bunch of those city scenes, so thanks for the tip!!

Ken.
 
Ken, the two city scenes match up real well and you could use the two as is and together (76"). You would still have the seam, but because the sky is the same it doesn't show as that much. If you wanted to add a third city scene, you could always modify one by cutting it to make it look a bit different.
 
Wow Rex,

That's a shame about having to waste that first set of posters - oh well, sometimes these expensive 'lessons' can't be avoided (had plenty of those myself LOL)!

For the Powerpoint presentation I'm planning to do at the show in July, I had a bunch of Dow board panels propped up in the background, painted with Ralph Lauren Cloud Blue latex - best representation of a 'generic' sky I could achieve. My problem was trying to hide the seams (I couldn't make these things permanent).

I see you already figured out how to avoid the mismatch problem next time around, can't wait to the the results!
 
I kept hoping you would post pictures to show us the problem. I thought of several things that you could do, but it would waste both of our time if they were inappropriate. Airbrush could work on a very fine setting and an intermediate color. If you were going to tear it out anyway, it might be worth a try.
 
Rex- just offering a suggestion, off the wall, but can you add clouds by air brush or fiberfill at the transition line? This might allow the color differences to be less noticeable.
 
Rex - Have you considdered taking a digital photo of the seam and editing it on the computer to blend the sky? You could print the blended section yourself and glue it over the old one.

I used this technic to combine two backdrops that where not meant to go together. I scanned the panels before putting them up, but taking digital photos may work.

Good luck
 
I wish that I had done as Space suggested and posted some pictures of the problem. The biggest obstacles to being able to paint were the areas that had cross walks, ore loading bridge, and also areas that were narrow. All these had a lot of sky showing which also was a mismatch. I believe that I could have hidden the seams and matched the upper skies without a lot of problem, but it was the other parts that had me stumped.

So, now I have most of the new backboards up and will paint them sky blue tomorrow. Thursday is the scheduled date for my new posters to arrive. I'm not sure when I cut them out if I should use foam board on all or just on buildings that will be more in the foreground, i.e glue most of the city landscape flush and then start with the foam board backing. I'm very open to opinions on this.:confused:
 



Back
Top