Wow, that's getting to be some scene! Very nicely executed - give yourself an attaboy ...

Do you Paint back drops for other people? I could use someone with your talent. Very Nice and I can hardly wait to see the area completed.

Dan

Thats a great scene!

Nice Job!

I was considering dropping the MEC's triple span over the Connecticut river to make things fit a little better on my design but after seeing this I need to reconsider that..

Chris

It looks fantastic and I can see how a backdrop like that would enhance my long-term layout ideas.

Is there a seam between the terrain and the backdrop? I'd love to see how you blended it together.

I'll echo everyone else - it looks fantastic!

Wow!  It's beautiful!  What tools do you use to stipple the gel medium?  The backdrop painting is outstanding.

Rick

Thanks for the kind comments.  One advantage of a bedroom-sized layout is the ability to do highly detailed scenes.  The total length of backdrop is only 16 feet per deck (I am currently considering two decks rather than three).  I would not be able to sustain this amount of backdrop detail on a basement empire!

To answer some specific questions,  I am available to do custom backdrop painting, but It is generally only practical for me to perform work on layouts in the Calgary area

The stippling technique for the gel medium was simple.  Apply generous blobs of gel over the painted water surface and use an old large house painting brush to spread it evenly.  Then just stipple with a vertical tapping motion to add random texture to the gel.  The gel retains the peaks and troughs resulting from the stippling and dries to a hard transparent surface within 24 hours.  I then went over the scene again with a much smaller (1/2 wide) flat artists brush and individually applied blobs of gel to the first coat.  This simulates more organized wave structures. 

There is a seam line between the backdrop and water surface and its actually not a very clean join.  I had to fill some gaps with joint compound and sand it down.   I managed to hide it by carefully blending the water colour on the backdrop with the textured water and by adding some horizontal shading bands that pull the eye away from the actual seam line.  These shots, taken at a lower oblique angle shows the actual join a bit better.   

So I suppose coming down under to Oz for backdrop painting session is out of the question so I'll join  the echo's here , That's a fantastic scene you have done

Thanks for the close up on the seam. It's really almost invisible - excellent job fooling the eye with the color variations.