Road building

There’s nothing like a heatwave to slow my work right down. That being said, all the paintwork on the roads is done.

First I inked in all the ruts, puddles and potholes:

At this stage, I was still unsure that the final product was going to be worth the amount of effort that I was putting in to it. By the way, the ink mix was 50% Chestnut  Ink and 50% water.

With the Kayak Brown to represent dried mud / solid earth, it was time to represent the soaking wet mud and the somewhat dried mud. This was done by making a roughly 60%-40% blend of Vermin Brown and Kayak Brown for the somewhat dry and pure Vermin Brown for the soaking wet.

The soaking wet mud could only be lying in and around the lowest parts of each part of road – because water always settles in the lowest places. This is where remembering what happens in Nature is all-important…there’s nothing like going out and seeing something first to get it perfect in your mind before trying to model it! In the least, use a good search engine to look at plenty of images of what you want to model – and don’t forget to make notes of the minutiae.

So, here are photos of the completed paintwork:

I’m happy, but once it’s cool enough for me to work in the hobby room without breaking into a sweat in seconds, I’ll put some Green Blend flock on the edges for grass, Dullcote each piece and call them finished.