Planning the Biddle Yard backdrop

Not much has happened on the layout for the first half of this year.  Mainly due to me jumping feet first into operations and making a lot of small adjustments to JMRI.  As evidence from the last session on May 9th (the previous post), I think I've finally got a good handle on it as it seems to be working pretty much the way I've had it envisioned.  Cars are moving smoothly to all the industries in a fairly random pattern.  I'm also getting a pretty random amount and types of cars moving.  So I feel it's time to get back to the layout.

However I'm finding that I'm struggling trying to find the motivation to work on a few things.  I had planned to paint up four more locos in the Blue and & White scheme and/or start working on another scene on the layout between DuBach and El Dorado, but I just can't find the motivation to start on these projects.

The other night while staging the layout for another op session, I was looking at the yard and all I could see was the 16' long blue backdrop. Ugh!  I got to thinking this might be a fairly easy project to tackle, nothing real fancy just some paint and some backdrop buildings?

The more I thought about it the more I started leaning to picking up more of the 2d printed background buildings like I did from Trackside Flats.

Not 100% sure how I wanted to tackle this as it was going to cost a decent amount for these buildings.  I had a couple choices.  I could buy what I needed from them already printed and mounted on black foam core and mount them to the backdrop.  I could also buy all the buildings on two large sheets, cut them out and mount them myself to foam core or glue them directly to the backdrop?  Or I could buy several premade backdrops, cut out the sky and just glue them to my backdrop.

I had envisions of having buildings running from one end to the other or space them out with some painted trees.   But that would entitle 16' of printed buildings and that could ensure that I'd spend some coin to do this.  Plus not sure how to layout the buildings to make the backdrop look plausible?

Somewhere along the line, a little voice in my head spoke up and told me to go look at the actual location.  Hmmm?  So I jumped on Google Maps and looked up Little Rock, AR.  Snooped around until I found Biddle yard.  It's pretty much intact yet as UP is still using it but the engine facility is pretty much gone, but you can still see the old roundhouse and tracks.

Right away the first thing I noticed was the overall shape of the yard.  If you compare the aerial to a plan of my yard it almost fits perfectly.

Using the engine facility on my yard as an anchor point, I noticed that where I am standing when running the yard, I would be standing where all the trees are located just to the south of the actual yard.  On where the backdrop would be, I noticed another line of trees that separated the yard from the south edge of Little Rock.  I'm sure that back in 1979, those large buildings were not there yet and the tree line was probably thicker?

But this got me thinking and I started using my modelers license.  Instead of lining the entire 16' of backdrop with 2d buildings, why not just use trees, much like I have with the biggest share of the rest of the layout?  But I got to thinking: "Maybe that would not look good as then, no matter where you looked, you'd see a tree line all the way around the layout?"  It might be a bit too much?

Then that little voice spoke up again.

What if I painted a solid (or pretty much a solid) tree line along the backdrop, then add some taller buildings BEHIND the tree line?  The trees would hide a lot of the shorter buildings, but the taller ones could peek above the trees, using less buildings?

I went back to Google Maps and started taking a closer look.  I dropped the little guy onto the highway bridge overlooking the yard.  The first thing I noticed was that large building behind the trees.  Granted, I'm thinking this image was taken in very early Spring as the trees are just starting to leaf out.  But once the leaves totally fill in, it should hide the biggest share of anything to the north of the tree line?  

The first image is a view off the highway looking N/NE, the second image is from the east of the yard looking W/SW.  Those trees are pretty tall?

One can see the building back there in these views.  But once the leaves fill out, you may not be able much at all?  So I chewed on this for a while.

The next day at work, my mind started wandering.  Instead of buying a bunch of building flats, I wonder if Google Gemini could lend a hand?  When I got home I sat down and pulled up Gemini and asked it to render me a very large metal sided building about 2 stories tall.  Color it a two tone tan, with the darker color on the bottom half.  After a bit fiddling it gave me this:

Since I wanted trees in the foreground, I didn't want to use printed trees due to the fact that the blue sky  showing through (if any) would have to match the color on the backdrop.  And I didn't want to go through the images and cut out the areas, so I decided I would paint the trees, much like I have on the rest of the layout.

This beckons back to the old argument of do I use a printed backdrop or a painted backdrop.  Do I want my eyes drawn away from my layout and onto the backdrop, or do I want the backdrop to just be there but not the main focus?

Painting the trees would do two things, I feel it would keep my eyes being drawn to the backdrop and it would also keep the look matching the rest of the backdrop around the layout.  Painting it would be!

Using the image that Gemini gave me of the big building, I asked it to render a line of trees in the foreground, but only about 2/3rds as tall as the building.  Again after a few adjustments to the wording, it gave me this:

The little voice cheered!

Now I had a good visual representation of what I wanted to do, and the way I've painted the previous trees on my backdrop I had a good idea of what I could do.  However I got to thinking, these trees are going to be a little closer than any of the others which meant I was going to have to make them a bit more detailed and I would probably have to trunks to make it look close to the image.  I think I can do this?

I took one of the 2D flats I purchased and decided to sacrifice it for the cause.  Figuring that the paint might soak into the image and ruin it, I sprayed it down with several light coats of a matte finish in a rattle can to hopefully seal it.

If I actually do this, I will NOT apply the images to black foam core, but will instead print the image on cardstock, then glue that to the actual backdrop.

Then I applied a thin coat of dark green that I've used on my "Distant Hills".

Next, I used some latex paint that was close to a tree trunk color and simply sketched in some trunks.

What I didn't take images of was the process of adding the stipple black blotches for shadow and applying the different shades of greens, starting with a darker green then working towards the lighter shades and ending up with an almost yellowish green to represent sunlit leaves.  But you can get a good idea with this image.

Here it's sitting in the yard against the backdrop.  I might have to adjust the height as it might be a little tall?

Now to see if I can bring this idea to fruition.