In the last installment of this, the backdrop still looked pretty cardboard-coloured. I’ve since been working on covering that up with a bit of fabric and at the same time visually extending the model so we get a bit more of a feeling for this being a slice of a really huge tree.

I transferred the design of the background onto a big piece of cotton fabric and started painting:

The inspiration for this was the same picture I used previously, but now on a much bigger scale:

The white areas are where the supports for the platforms will stick out and still need to be cut out and hemmed.

Here’s the whole width of the thing painted:

You can see the entrance hole in the middle, and a smaller hole for a waterfall to come out of at the right. The paints are textile paints, and I used a simple textile marker from an IKEA set for adding some details in black.

I’ve since extended the painting upwards on the other half of the fabric which is hanging down from the table at the top of this picture. This will be attached to the wall above the model, visually extending it upwards. Still need to think about the best way to do attachment points at the top.

Onwards to ironing the whole thing to set the colours and then some sewing!