Backscene top tips

The backscene is painted on sheets of hardboard with cheap, oil-based undercoat, acrylics and artists' oil paints. Here are Robert’s top tips on painting your own backscene:

• Look for reference photographs, or go sketching with artists’ materials, or, preferably, both! Google

Street View is a brilliant resource for looking at the landscape of a particular area.

• Make quick thumbnail sketches, then more elaborate drawings of your ideas. It will save time remedying false starts!

• Avoid drawing vertical lines that represent horizontal structures. For example, a road or a dry-stone wall receding into the distance may appear vertical when you’re standing on top of it, but if you put that in your backscene it will look wrong from almost any angle. It’s much better to use shallow diagonals – they'll make sense from most angles.

• Aim to make the perspective look acceptable from as many viewpoints as possible, even though there will be some views that don’t look correct. Backscene painting has much in common with traditional stage-scenery backdrop painting.

• Is the layout at, or below, eye-level? This will affect where people will expect to see the horizon in the backscene. Try using a roll of wall lining paper to make a quick cut-out paper version of the horizon, Blu-tacked to a wall behind the layout, to see if it looks right in relation to the perspective of the layout.

• Make a scaled-down painting before painting anything large. When it looks right, draw a grid of squares on it, and draw the same number of squares, scaled-up, on the surface where you’re going to paint your backscene. If it’s large or complicated, number the squares to be sure you’re copying the right part.

• Start with the sky after deciding what it should look like. It may not need to be blue! Even if it is blue, you may find you need to mix much more white than blue into your colour. Photos may be helpful. There is very often a gradient of tones and colours in the sky going from deeper more saturated colours at the top, towards lighter, less saturated colours at the bottom. Blending colours is much easier with large brushes, and with paints that don’t dry too quickly. When painting the landscape, keep in mind that distant colours are often paler and may appear to be radically changed, sometimes by being mixed with the colours visible in the sky. This effect is sometimes known as 'aerial perspective'. There are many articles on the subject to be found online.

• Avoid too much small detail, which will be a distraction from the layout. It’s generally better to think like a stage scenery painter, going for large effects and simplified detail.

The villages of Aberdyfi and Corris inspired this scene. The tunnel mouth is from Penhelig Tunnel, where I was captivated as a boy by the 'The Cambrian Coast Express' as it swept past behind an ex-Great Western 'Manor'.