Since I model northern South Carolina, where the sun tends to bleach asphalt roads to a light blueish-gray color in fairly short order, I decided I;d lived with my jet-black roads long enough. I decided to try weathering them with a mix of black, white and blue chalks. This was the result:
This stretch of I-85 near Wellford, SC was the result I was after:
Yeah, I think I goofed on this one. What do you guys think? Any suggestions are appreciated.
The weathering looks good… for a fourty or fifty year-old road.
I don’t think you did bad. It looks just about like an asphalt road around here after a few years.
Jarrell
I don’t think it looks bad at all.
Paul
Looks good to me.
If you want an excuse why it looks a little too dirty, put a couple of earthmoving trucks on the road with no covers on their load. Maybe wipe down one side of the road in the opposite direction to the loaded trucks. That’s what it reminded me of.
cheers
It’s been a few years, but as I recall, SC roads were fairly well maintained, so the color tended to be a uniform fade rather than the mix of potholes, broken pavement and trash often seen. 85 is an interstate so it will be in better shape than rural roads. Now, with that said, a lot of rural roads, at least through the 80s, were macadam rather than asphalt. This tended to weather to a grayish white, but the stand out feature to me was the white tips of all the rocks exposed against the grayish background. These roads also tended to have more tar patches on them.
Two things about SC roads also – if I recall SC had white lines marking the edge on most of their roads. Also they have a very good shoulder to ditch transition, compared to TN where I am now that has no should on their roads.
Overall I’d say you got a pretty good color for a county road. Heck just put a Sloan construction crew getting ready to pave it and it will scream SC.
I think you have underappreciated your work! [tup]
Looks like blacktop roads around here…without the potholes/patches! [Y]
NY and PA’s roads are known to be the worst in the USA, and we get a fade too, I don’t know about the “blueish” part-as I don’t see “blueish” in the real road photo you have, but what you have there is GREAT. [wow]
Don’t undersell or sell yourself short! [yeah]
Good job! [bow]
Your roads look fine. The color is believable.
You might try a felt pen, as an alternative to tape, to produce your road striping.
Rich
Looks like the average back road in Southern Ohio after a few winters.
Don’t look to bad unless you was going for a faded well maintained road.
Looks like the tint in the windshield may have altered the color you’re after?
You have a perfect match for one of our western PA secondary roads. It looks very realistic to me.
Joe
To the OP…
I think you are pulling our collective legs… Your weathered road is OUTSTANDING !!!
Your road looks like any other road I have seen…
Good job [wow][tup]
Epic Fail? O.K., if making a tar road look like aTar Road is a fail, than you should be ashamed of yoursel for doing exactly that.
Yeah, I was waiting for the picture of where the powder was spilled, ruining the great job shown in the first pic.
Don’t be so hard on yourself.
I think you have a case of low-self-artist-esteem. That’s where someone like you (or me, or any of us here) spends so much time and effort planning something, creating something, realizing something is different than what you pictured, then glooming over something, that the artist, at the end, can only see the flaw in the something that is really quite a good piece of work.
Short version: your road looks really good. I’m rather jealous, actually.
Thanks for all the kind words guys. I thought they came out way to white, but the look is growing on me.