Purple mountains, dark foreground

[FJ and G]

Has anyone tried painting their mountains a dark, perhaps purplish color? This would seem to be most effective for a backdrop that depicts a sunset.

Also, some of the foreground might also be painted dark.

I know that most people experiment with the lighting, just didn't know if anyone has ever experimented with the painting as well.

I'm doing several sky experiments. The first 2 photos show current paint experiments; but I'm thinking about doing a darker sky and dark mountains instead.

http://davidvergun.tripod.com/index3.html

(If the site doesn't come up, try back in an hour)

[CNJ831]

FJandG - While a sunset background can be painted very impressively, it is then extremely difficult to properly light the foreground scene. Lighted in a conventional fashion, with the light coming from above and somewhat to the front of the scene, all the shadows or shaded areas fall in the opposite driection from the assumed position of the Sun. This tends to lead to a very confusing, unworldly scene for the viewer and I have yet to see any attempt at it that works. MR has published a couple of such scenes over the years in their annual photo contests, mainly created through digital image manipulation, and to me (as someone with experience in model railroad photography) they look very unrealistic, if not down right odd to the viewer!

I do seem to recall, however, one modeler having painted his sunset sky on the backdrop but placed a two dimensional set of dark hills a coupled of inches in front of it. From below he lit the backdrop in sunset colors but had no overhead or frontal illumination on this portion of the layout. With the room lights off, this did give a quite believable impression to this isolated scene.

CNJ831

[wp8thsub]

Look at Lee Nicholas' Utah Colorado Western in the latest issue of Great Model Railroads. I used a lot of a darker purple for the distant mountains around Jiggs on Lee's backdrop, and varying lighter purples in some other areas. I don't know if any of the photos show the effect to advantage since I don't have my GMR yet, but it works out well in person with the shadow-box style of lighting and valences Lee uses.

[FJ and G]

CNJ831,

Yes, I see the predicament. My lighting is directly overhead recessed lights that fortunately I can rotate to get where I want them but not the requisit low-angle lighting that a sunset would produce. I also will play around with dimming the lights. In addition to the purplish mountains, I am considering dark ground cover, desert.

Rob,

I've got the latest GMR and will look when I go home tonight. Of course it always has been a common technique to mix a bit of blue into the paint when coloring distant mountains near the backdrop, but going to a much darker purple or other color would be quite bold and creative.

[wp8thsub]

I just picked up my GMR, and the photos of the UCW mostly miss the areas I was refeerring to. Photo 1 shows a spot at the edge of Jiggs where the mountains are a much darker purple in person than they appear in the photo. Note also that the clouds and sky have had some purple introduced, along with enough other colors to suggest a late time of day, but not enough to be a distraction.