South Oak Road

Adding the backscene

The backscene seems to be the downfall of many an otherwise superb layout. How many times have you seen high quality modelling spoilt by a poorly painted sky in the background? Even as a professional illustrator, I have never been entirely happy with the backscenes that I’d created on past layouts, they always looked ‘painted’ now matter how well they turned out.

In the past five years the quality and cost of large format colour prints has improved out of sight. Combined with a similar trend in digital photography and panoramic ’stitching’ programs being readily available, why would you bother to paint your own backscene?

The key to a successful backscene seems to be to keep it simple! I was recently given access to a large format colour printer, so I stitched together a couple of basic sky panoramas in Photoshop for use on South Oak Road. I eventuality decided on the ‘grey day’ version and then overlaid the house backs over the top. Once output, I had the print matt laminated and then mounted it to the layout with double-sided tape, job done! Once the foliage and surrounding model buildings have been added I think it should look quite effective.

Please feel free to download and use these panoramas for your layout. Just click on the links below to download the images to your hard drive. Within each of the downloaded ZIP folders you will find a 1243mmx250mm CMYK 300dpi JPG image.

Click here for the ‘grey sky’ image.

Click here for the ‘blue sky’ image.