Backdrop - Houston Skylines
#1
Houston has four distinct areas with large building skylines, and I am thinking I will do all four areas as backdrop paintings. We have the downtown area which is the major area for skyscrapers, south of downtown we have the Texas Medical Center, to the southwest there is the Greenway Plaza area, and west of downtown is the "uptown" area. In addition, there are numerous tall buildings scattered all about the area.

I did an image search on google, and found tons of photos of the various areas. Then I tinkered with the photos in Photodraw to enlarge them to a size that feels right for the layout. Then I printed them out in both color and black and white. I'll cut out the buildings from the black and white photos and use them as guides to get the outside edges layed out on the backdrop.

The first photo below is Greenway Plaza, the second is downtown. I don't think it will be too difficult to paint them using the previously learned techniques from the other backdrops, considering they are mostly geometric shapes. The hard part looks to be all the tiny windows, thousands of them! I'm thinking maybe cut masking tape in little thin strips and place them both horizontally and vertically to outline the windows, then drybrush the windows in. This would definitely be tedious, but seems the best way. Freehanding them in would be too inconsistent I fear. If anyone has suggestions, I'm listening!

Not sure when I will actually start on these, as I have a few other projects going, not the least of which is cleaning up the layout room and my workbench.

   

   
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#2
Gary,

I think that your best bet might be to go with the colour prints possibly with some tweeking to take off the gloss and add a bit of city haze to the backdrop. Given the speed with which you seemed to have produced the sample backdrops, you obviously have a good grasp on photoshoping so why not continue. Why reinvent the wheel when the KISS principal [Keep It Simple Stupid] will cover the situation and reduce your labour input.

Perhaps a step by step example could help us all?

Mark
Fake It till you Make It, then Fake It some More
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#3
Mark, thanks for the suggestion, and using photos was something I was considering while the layout was in the planning stages. But with 170 feet of backdrop, I didn't think I could make a photo backdrop look right, with all the seams and transitions between areas. Since the backdrop in other areas is already painted, I feel I need to do the entire thing with paint, just to keep everything consistent. Plus, I have found that the process of painting is relaxing and seeing the end result is satisfying. Smile
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#4
Gary,

Perhaps a combined approach might work best. Use a painted backdrop with photocopy produced cut outs of the buildings. The colour printout shown would appear to give you an excellent paint chip sample for the correct colour to paint the background. That way you get to paint and the photocopy provides building details.

Mark
Fake It till you Make It, then Fake It some More
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#5
Hi Gary,

I was wondering if you could use some of that plastic grid stuff used for yarn needlework projects as a masking to spray paint windows on buildings like the one toward the middle of your first picture?

Ralph
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#6
Gary - looking forward to seeing what you do with this! I think the challenge will be different than the others. So many geometric shapes that feature prominently in the scene may be hard to "keep straight" for viewing from different perspectives.

Good luck!

Andrew
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#7
Mark, a combined approach of photos and paint is an interesting thought, it would certainly ease the tedious job of doing the windows. What scares me is the edges of the photos against the painted backdrop. I don't think I will start on this today or tomorrow, I'll have to see where my modeling "mood" pushes me this weekend.
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#8
Ralph Wrote:I was wondering if you could use some of that plastic grid stuff used for yarn needlework projects as a masking to spray paint windows on buildings like the one toward the middle of your first picture?

Ralph, I'm not sure what that is. Any more info on that? Anything to ease the work would be welcomed!

The masking tape idea would take forever, but I am thinking I could survive the process. Now, there is the option of painting the building color first, then masking for the windows, or doing the window color first, and then painting the horizontal and vertical building color lines over that. The second may be easier, but would be painting a lighter color over a darker color, which would take at least two coats of the lighter paint to cover the darker paint.
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#9
MasonJar Wrote:Gary - looking forward to seeing what you do with this! I think the challenge will be different than the others. So many geometric shapes that feature prominently in the scene may be hard to "keep straight" for viewing from different perspectives.

Andrew, I had visited a layout awhile back where the owner had hired an artist to paint a downtown scene on the backdrop. It was a much closer view of the downtown area, and was about 3 feet wide and 18 inches tall on the backdrop. There wasn't a noticable loss of perspective when viewing from various angles, so I think that will be okay.

An idea I will try is to solidly tape a draftsman's T-square to the backdrop above the area, and use draftsman's triangles to keep the vertical lines straight.
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#10
Gary, the samples of background you posted look quite huge. That implies the foreground scenery is close (less than one mile) to the backdrop buildings. Is that your intention? I would assume the industrial area you showed me some month ago is more far away and the downtown buildings appear much smaller.

Do you remember when I had a Houston skyline on the backdrop. I think it was still to large for a view from the Houston industrial areas in the suburbs.
Another problem I could not solve was the direction the buildings were looked at. My backdrop was taken from an Hwy bridge north west of downtown. No tracks around that area...
[Image: Img_0193.jpg?t=1303568550]
Reinhard
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#11
Hi Gary, it's the black stuff in the pic. I posted this for another project so ignore the other items.

[Image: IMG_1986.jpg]
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#12
O.K. ... let's hope I can remember each of the points I wanted to respond to. It's morning and my thoughts, while what I had considered important enough to respond to will not be organized in a chronological order ... just remembering them all at this point will take some kind of magic.

The "plastic grid stuff" used for yarn art (often a type cross stitch using yarns) is called scrim. Source: crafts store ... good idea Ralph or whoever it was but the space between the "windows" is not wide enogh and the windows are too large in comparison.

Gary, your original plan, including building a tape grid will, I believe, yield the results that you seek, as well as maintain a "continuity of look" to your backdrop. To handpaint here, use matte finished photos there and a mixed media collage in still another location will not, I don't think, give you the homogeonous appearance of the "indication of real life" in miniature that you are shooting for (can I still say that?)

Remember, this is not a piece of art to hang in your personal gallery at home or on your office wall, but a backdrop to the main event - your trains on the tracks in the 3-D scenery that you have painstakingly fabricated and installed. It should, as its name implies, be a "backdrop" ... in the background.

I just think that inconsistancies of media, detail level, style and the like will detract from each overall scene by drawing attention to itself. In essence, you want the casual viewer not to notice the "backdrop," but instead to concentrate his gaze on the railraod that runs before him.

Just one man's foggy early morning thoughts over a blend of Columbian and French Roast coffees with a splash of heavy cream and a half-ounce of Amaretto in a Reading Lines mug, while perusing the most recent Big Blue posts of interest.

... and now the scrim appears before I finish my many proof reads ... cool!
biL

Lehigh Susquehanna & Western 

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln
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#13
Reinhard, I agree, the photos may be too big. I printed several different sizes, these are the largest, and "in my head" without having access to the layout, they felt correct. Some of the bridges I did are about 5 miles east-southeast of the downtown area, and the industrial areas are about 12 miles south. The photo of the downtown area I have is from the southeast, so it is somewhat the proper angle. As for the Greenway Plaza area, it is probably 15 miles from any significant industrial trackage. I'll end up doing whatever "feels" right to me, and the areas just might get painted smaller now that you have provided some ideas for me to think about. Thumbsup

The backdrop you had of the houston skyline certainly looked good. Smile
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#14
Ralph Wrote:Hi Gary, it's the black stuff in the pic. I posted this for another project so ignore the other items.

The other itmes were for your ballpark lights. Thumbsup

Thanks for the suggestions, I suppose the grid stuff can be found at Hobby Lobby?
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#15
I find it at Michaels. Tell ya what though...I have a sheet of stuff and a scrap piece of white shelf board. I'll shoot some spray paint and see how it turns out. I suspect bil's assessment might be right but I'm curious to see how it works.
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