Scenery With Ceiling Tiles Part 3

by Paul Shoemaker

Wow, can things change fast. Now that we have the shapes and the foundation pieces in place and where we want them, it’s time to start making things look like grass, dirt and rocks. This part of the scenery series will be a bit shorter on text and much more focused on images to show you how to make the grass look like grass or rocks like rocks and so forth. So what we will do this time around is to look at each area on the track and its surrounding scenery as we build up the colors to make our little world look more like the real world.

Part III: How to Build the Illusion of Realism

I work with a gentlemen that began canvas painting a few years ago. He has moved from landscapes to portraits and has now started combining the two. Watching his technique develop has been a privilege and an opportunity to learn some techniques of my own all over again. I have been a professional graphics artist for some years. I started in the advertising world doing airbrush enlargements of photographs or “enhancing” photos with an airbrush. This was all in the pre-Photoshop era. Later I moved on to computer graphics and engineering, but continued to keep my analog skills tuned over the years by building model kits and race tracks. What ties my lessons together is the concept that we are trying to make someone feel like they are viewing a real racing environment not just a scene. And if we do it right, it’s not viewed in miniature, but we draw the person in, to feel like they are part of the environment we created. My friend does that with his paintings. His latest painting is bunch of kids at the soccer field gathered around their coach. In his presentation of the picture, you feel like you are on the side lines watching the game, not looking at a painting. That is exactly what we want to accomplish with our scenery. We don’t want just a bunch of trees and grass tossed around, we want to feel like we just walked into the landscape itself. When you start thinking you smell the scent of oil and gasoline, or hear the engines roar or the crowd cheer just from the sights you take in, then you’ve placed yourself in the scene and you are no longer just watching it, you are a part of it. This will add to the fun and build the excitement of your hobby to new levels. You are no longer watching a car zipping down the slot, you are in a high powered racing machine, power sliding through a corner and reeling in the leader as you fly by the pits and the grandstands, you are now the driver, you are now part of the world you built and that is when the illusion becomes real and the enjoyment and fun are at their highest.

Base Coats and Color Coats...

So first let’s look at where we are. All of the ceiling tile is in place, our rock formations are shaped and any additions, like hills and such are finished on the sculpting side of things and the grassy areas are ready for a bit of color. Before you start any painting give the whole track a good clean up, Pick up all those stray tools, wire brushes, sandpaper and leftover debris and put them away. Then give the whole track table a good vacuuming to get rid of any of those stray bits too small to pick up by hand.

After all of the shaping is done, thoroughly clean up the track area to make the next phase easier.	Now that the work area has been cleaned and vacuumed you are ready to begin the painting phase.

Now you are ready to apply a base coat on your scenery. Always start with a light color and work your way to the darker colors last. Light colors are easily covered, dark ones bleed through and require several coats to cover well. That adds to build up and can leave an unrealistic appearance. So remember, start with the lightest shades and work up to darker ones. In the case of grass at Woodrum Ridge Raceway (WRR) we have a large area to cover. The track scenery at WRR is broken up into two distinct types, grassy countryside and the pit and grandstand areas. For the grassy areas we placed ceiling tiles down and scraped off the top layer to give that appearance. For the sake of speed I used an airbrush for most of the work in this article. However, a good portion of the grassy areas were done with a sponge brush by my kids, as seen in earlier articles. The base coat will serve two purposes. One, it will be the initial cover or primer for each new coat of color and two, it will help seal the tile material and eliminate any dust issues. I use water based acrylics on all of my scenery painting. It’s easy to clean up and doesn’t leave a strong scent in the air. The ceiling tiles are very absorbent and will take a highly thinned water based paint very well. I said in the previous article 50-50 on the paint and glue and 2 to 1 on that mixture to water. You may add more water if you are using an airbrush. This mixture can be sprayed or sponged on the tile surface. A word of caution when using this mixture in an airbrush. The white glue will dry very quickly in the mixing chamber of the airbrush. You will need to take frequent breaks and clean the heads and mixing chamber often. The dried glue is removed easily enough but will eventually stop up the paint flow if not removed often. Apply the base coat in heavy layers. The tile material will drink this up. Once dry however, the glue in the mixture will seal the porous tile and the next layers painted will not soak in as before. Make sure to cover all of the grassy areas well with the base coat and let dry over night. You will only need to use the glue portion of this mixture with the base coat. All following coats are only paint and water. Tomorrow we will start on the next phase of color.

Here are the ingredients for the staining/sealing mixture: water-base paint, white glue and water.	Dab the stain on the tiles. The tiles will absorb the mixture and will be sealed for additional detail painting later. You can do this with an airbrush too.

The pictures below will each show one point of view from the track, with the next photo showing the progression of color added. We’ll start with the base coat and review each technique as more colors are applied. We will also review some new techniques for enhancing the appearance of the scenery, using dry-brushing and washes to bring out details.

Picture From Top Left to Right: Picture 1 is the bare tile material. Picture 2 is the base light green coat with the glue mixture. Picture 3 is a darker green layer. Picture 4 is a layer of tan. Picture 5 adds a light gray to the layers around rocky areas. Picture 6 has a dark brown layer added to bring in some depth in areas. Notice that we worked from a light color to progressively darker tones as we built up the colors of the landscape. Borrowing from my painter friend, there are thousands of colors in a landscape. You can’t paint them all, but by picking selective combinations of colors you can make the eye think it can see all of the same ones that are in the real landscape. You are now building the illusion to make it real. The “step” in the hillside will be used to anchor bushes and trees later on.

These pictures show the same progression from plain to light green base coat, to dark green, to tan, to gray to dark brown on a different area of track. The playing cards are used as masks to keep the over spray off other finished areas. Notice on the more rocky areas that I have left them bare. We will fill those in with more colors and work out specific details using the washing and dry brush techniques.

Even though the temperature dropped into the 20’s here, the sock on the air brush is not keeping the paint warm! I wrap the toe end of an old sock around the paint bottle to absorb any back pressure paint spills. This keeps the paint off the parts of the track I don’t want painted in little spots. I use old plastic coated playing cards as paint masks. They are thin enough to fit under most edges and the plastic holds up well to several applications of paint. Always wipe the excess off of your masking material. That way you don’t drag paint onto areas you are intending to mask.

These are the last few pictures before we start working on washes and dry brushing. Notice that with each additional color, we work to copy the colors and patterns in nature. The striations in the rocks come from erosion and layers of sediment that built up over thousands of years, Ours took quite a bit less time than that, only about 8 hours in painting. I took several photos of real cliff facings to use as guides to painting these. When you are ready to start detailing your track, get some references to go by. They will make your efforts more realistic and you will enjoy the results much more. Now on to the grand illusion, adding highlights and shadows using the techniques of washes and dry brushing.

Washes and Dry Brushing...

These are two techniques that I learned to do, modeling sci-fi and movie monster kits. The general rule is to use a wash to enhance recesses or areas that would be shadowed or blend in too much using the main color overall. A highlight is brought out in detail by using dry brushing to accentuate a detail that is forward in the field of vision. Examples of using a wash would be to bring out the door or hood lines in a slot car body by filling them in with either a darker shade of the same color as the body or use black to fill in the lines. A highlight would be to pull out the details of a door handle or side trim in silver using the dry brush method.

So what are these methods and how do you do them. Let’s start with washes. A wash is a very diluted mixture of paint and it’s thinning agent. Sometimes I may add a bit of ammonia to an acrylic wash to help the paint stick a bit better. The mixture should be around 5% paint and 95% thinner, making the mix very thin. Using a soft brush you “wash” the mixture over any recessed detailed areas you want to fill with the wash color. Working quickly, wipe any excess off the surface area leaving the mixture in the recessed detail areas. Dry brushing is a bit easier, but takes some practice to master. Have a blotter of some type ready to use in your paint area. A paper towel or old t-shirt are excellent choices for this process. Using a fine tipped brush, dip the end of the bristles into the paint. Brush the blotter with the paint lightly, removing most of the paint, but not all. Then very gently, graze over the raised detail you want highlighted, with the “dry” brush. This should take several applications to do, but will really bring out small details or create contrast with your washes.

How does this work on scenery? Well, in this case a wash is a bit more tricky because the material we are painting is so absorbent. So that leaves nothing to blot off. In this case we will have to pick out places we want to see more shadows in very carefully. You will be working with dark colors in a wash and they will be difficult to cover up if a mistake is made. So using the mixing rule we will pick a few cracks and crevices in our rock walls and get the brush inside those spaces, making sure not to get any on the flat protruding parts of the rocks.

Highlighting will use the dry brush method, only we will use a broad flat brush and graze over the highest tips of the rock areas. In and around where I live in central Kentucky, we have a lot of shale and other dark rock formations. So I will be using a dark gray and black for some highlighting. this will give the rocks the same appearance as I see around here. Some light gray and tan was also used to bring a few spots out as sun bleached limestone or sandstone.

By mixing these colors and using these techniques you can make some very realistic scenery only using paint and some creative thought.

You can bring out the details with washing and dry brushing. Dry brushing some dark gray brings up the
contrast with the lighter background colors. Use only the very lightest of strokes to get the best results.

Here are some final shots of the scenery after some dry brushing and washes. This really brings out the details.

That wraps our series with ceiling tiles. Up next we will start bringing in some additional scenery with trees, bushes, structures and buildings. We’ll look at the more than noticeable lack of buildings related to racing and solve the problem by eating more cereal! Yep, you read that correctly. Due to the small size of our scale, it can get a bit pricey building everything from sheet plastic or finding long, out of production kits. So I started looking for some plentiful resource to build my pit garages and the idea hit me while watching my girls eat their breakfast....Now that I got you thinking, More to come!

Here’s a small peek at what’s up next. The first prototype of the pit garages made from cereal boxes.