painting a sky

[Anonymous]

We have a room we are going to use for our HO trains. The room is drywalled. I'm looking for suggestions on techniques for painting the walls to look like sky.

[douginut]

Take a look at the many WALLPAPERS you can buy from places like Lowes or Home Depot, or Wallpaper Warehouse to name just a few. There are Mural papers, accent papers, cloud appliques, endless variety.
Even Night sky. or the surface of the moon.

Doug, in Utah

[Anonymous]

Check out this thread at The Gauge forum:
http://www.the-gauge.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2906

[Anonymous]

im was thinking blue paint... and some white paint

:-) i couldnt pass it up

[dknelson]

I used deep blue paint and then a much lighter shade of the same basic color (as shown in the color strips at the paint store). I created a third shade of blue by blending the two
Then I painted using a rather wet brush. Dark blue at top, mid blue in middle, the almost white blue at the horizon -- looked strange -- then using a fresh brush I blended the edges. The result was pretty plausible. Sometimes I'd also use a fresh roller for different effects.
I advise AGAINST trying to paint puffy clouds unless you are a real artist. Actually the blended method creates streaky looking clouds such as one sees on a sunny day with strong winds.
Dave Nelson

[Anonymous]

Dave Frary Has an excellant article on the Method Dave Nelson describes.I cant remember which month of MR it was in(let alone the year) but Perhaps Andy or one of the MR staff could help with this.I used the Dave Frary Method myself with outstanding results.

[dknelson]

if you are unsure of your artistic abilities (and who isn't?) it is often possible to buy scrap pieces of Masonite at a good lumber yard. 2' by 2' should do. Give it a try on a scrap piece. Of course Murphy's Law suggests that you will do your very best work on that scrap piece and there will be no way you can use it for a backdrop.
Dave Nelson

[CNJ831]

A simple, yet one of the most affective methods I've encountered, is to paint a sky background using Sherwin-William "Ethereal Blue", a light blue similar to a summer sky. Once dry, one uses cloud stenciles, cut out from posterboard, spraying around the edges lightly with common flat white spray-can paint. The cloud stenciles can either be made by the modeler or even purchased from Walthers as item #519-1. I did my own stenciles from photos of clouds I took but it hardly matters. With a little practice the results are really quite impressive.

One thing to consider is that a sky background should not be too artistically perfect as it can draw the viewer's attention away from the rest of the modeled scene. For a sky, suggestive of reality is better than Renbrandt-perfect in model railroading.

John

[Anonymous]

Try this, get yourself a tin of blue paint and a tin of white. Use a large paint roller tray or just a large board on the floor. Tip the blue paint on one side and the white on the other, let the two colors overlap slightly. Do not totaly mix the two together. Run your roller through the two colors. Apply to the drywall and the roller will automatically blend the blue and white together. Keep adding blue and white to the roller tray to keep the same blend. I've seen the artists at the TV Studio I work at use this method.
Best of luck.
Jim.