Weathering the Roadside

I can get some quiet jobs done during the weekday evenings.

This week I got some layers of paint on the raised concrete end of the track and started the weathering.

I don't like dwelling on the intermediate stages of paint, they always look messy.

Perhaps that's just the way I paint :-)

It starts to come together with the weathering.

From what I have seen concrete next to roads invariably gets a layer of black soot washed down by rain.

For that effect I use what looks like dirty water on a torn sponge and drag it up the concrete.

The mixture is less than a pea size drop of mat black paint to half a cup of water.

I add more colour towards the bottom as that is where grub congregates probably as damp rising up from the ground.

A smear of undiluted black paint on the cup of watery paint is handy to dip a corner of the sponge in to add more depth. I keep the sponge wet and drag it about. Mainly pulling the extra paint from the bottom towards the top.

I always use water based paints. Oil based paints always make me bunged up for several days so water based acrylics are my preferred choice.

In this case I'm using water based household paint. I have white and black to make up greys to cover larger areas, mainly for the concrete edges.

Roads are rarely black unlike the Scalextric plastic. I'm matching the plastic with black paint on the borders but then reducing the solid colour of the road surface with a grey wash over all the black.

I was going to mask the conductors but I wanted to fade the colour rather than have a harsh edge. I used a hand held mask to keep the paint off of the contacts and rubbed them down after to clean them.

For the road surface I found it easier to dip the foam in to undiluted paint and then in to the water to to wash off most of the paint and wet the sponge. That was then dragged along the track and the border.

I'm undecided on the look at the moment. It will be the final detailing that will hide the transition from black road to concrete wall with a more natural appearance.

Driving about it is not hard to see how grub gets pushed to the sides of roads blurring the margin. That's the next job to do.

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Update:

The above looks a bit blotchy, see my next post for improvements.

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