A Scenic Backdrop

Never having been much of an artist I was reluctant to try painting my own layout back-scene. However, after watching a few episodes of the art program on Discovery Home and Leisure I finally plucked up enough courage and inspiration to give it a try!



I began by painting the backdrop with sky blue matt emulsion. Next, I outlined the hills with grey acrylic art paint and filled them in with varying mixtures of green, brown and grey, emphasising the greens and browns more towards the top and the greys to the bottom. The main objective was to make the background blend in with the "real" hill to the right so, to try and make the scene look continuous, I painted in a little more light browns and grey to the right-most hill.

To top it all off I stippled yellow onto the tops of the hills to give the effect of sunlight coming in from the right.

Finally, I dry-brushed some white into the sky for a slightly hazy look. I'm quite pleased with the overall effect and it was much easier to do than I thought!

Right, I'm off to the Lake District now to try my hand at some proper landscape painting