Okay, without getting too technical about the way the earth's blue sky has various shades of blue----which color blue did you choose for a background on your model railroad?
Which brand & store? hamr
Which brand & store? hamr
How bout a blue sky background???
- Thread starter XavierJ123
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6 years ago when my wife and I were decorating the soon to be nursery, we went out and bought 5 very vivid bright colors. One of them happened to be a dark blue. A year ago, when it came time to paint my backdrop, I wandered out into the garage to see what kind of blues I had and found the old can. It's called blue saphire and it is a little too dark for me. Still, it was blue and I had it.
Shade is less important than variation... get a good deep blue for your sky, and a quart of white. Mix up a lighter shade of blue using the white and your blue, and paint the bottom 1/3 of your backdrop with the lighter shade, and paint the top 1/3 your original dark blue. Then blend the light and dark together while they're still wet. After they're dry add clouds, and viola! Sky!
The nice think about backdrops is that if you don't like the way they turn out, you can slap another coat on and try again! 
Actually, I'd try just light sprays or washes (with a dry brush) of light blue/white starting at the bottom and working up. You can feather the lighter blue
into the darker blue at the top, and gradually build up to a colour you're happy with.
Actually, I'd try just light sprays or washes (with a dry brush) of light blue/white starting at the bottom and working up. You can feather the lighter blue
into the darker blue at the top, and gradually build up to a colour you're happy with.
Just an asside regarding this sort of widely used and often illustrated technique. In about 95% of the examples I've seen, the degree of paling, or whitening, with approach to the layout's horizon has been drastically over done. Often the lower portions of the backdrop appear almost pure white, or have only a trace of blue about them. In general, in the real world the lightening of the sky's coloration is not usually overly obvious (expect perhaps in summer) until one is within about 15-20 degrees of the horizon, although many hobbyist examples seem to suggest it extends strongly to at least twice that height.
So, in reality, this is an effect (color change) that should be more of a weakly indicated transistion, rather than an intensely depicted one when it comes to model railroad backdrops.
CNJ999
I strongly agree! Don't worry about the brand/store, there is tremendous variation in the color of the sky, there is no "right" shade.
When thinking about color, what we see in our mind is often not the same as what we see with our eyes (e.g. we might think the color of a shadow is "black', but that's seldom true). To help avoid this, try working from photos for inspiration.
Good luck!
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I used "Aviary Blue" (Sherwin-Williams 25-Year). A definite improvement over the dirty white the walls were previously. :mrgreen:
