Trees at the entrance of the yard

With the clouds finished I decided to get on with the trees.

On the left end of the yard where it connects to the layout, there is a 6' section of backdrop that I want to try and transition into the yard.  I started out painting the trees the same way and the same height as they are on the backdrop behind Winnfield.  I painted them about 2/3rds across.  At this point I think I'm going to add my first building then start painting larger trees.  I'm hoping this is going to help show some forced perspective.

This time before painting them, I had the forethought to record the progress unlike last time.

I started the tree line using the dark green that I used when I painted the previous trees, it's basically a Hunter Green and serves only to give me a base to build off of.

The next step was to stipple black paint, which is used to give depth to the trees and act like shadows.

Once this is done and dry, I used two shades of green craft paint.  A Dark Forest Green and a Medium Green.  I mixed a small amount of the Medium green just to lighten the Forest Green up a touch.

This also helps to mute the black so it isn't so stark.  At this point, the shape of the trees are starting to show up.

Next I used straight Medium Green and stippled it over most of the tree shapes, but since I want the sunlight coming from the upper left, I tried to keep most of this color from the middle to left side of each tree.

Now comes the fun part and where the trees start looking like trees.  Using the Medium Green I mixed a small amount of yellow in for a lighter green.  This I tried to keep to the left most side of each tree clump.  This is where the sunlight is starting to hit the leaves, making them a bit more bright.

Finally, I continued to add the Yellow to the green from the previous color.  I didn't want the leaves to look too Yellow, so the previous green gave me a subdued greenish yellow and just enough to highlight the leaves and show a pronounced shape of individual trees.

Too much yellow and the effect will look ruined.  It's hard to tell, but the colors do darken a bit as they dry.  Sometimes it's good to stop and give the colors a chance to dry which tells you if you need more or less color.

With this stage done, I sat the backdrop back into place.  As in the yard, there is no space between the track and backdrop to plant full 3D trees, so I think I'm going to use a small amount of poly fiber covered with some darker ground foam and place it along the backdrop to hopefully hide the line where the backdrop meets the surface. 

Truth be told, the entire painting process only required about an hour of my time.