| As promised, here is the tutorial for painting lava bases. These bases are from Dark Arts Miniatures. The colors used in this tutorial are are all from the Games Workshop line: Scab Red, Red Gore, Blood Red, Blazing Orange, Golden Yellow, Chaos Black, and Codex Grey. |
We begin with a white primer. We then do a thin base coat of Scab Red. Basically this is just a wash, and you don't really need to worry about getting fantastic coverage because most of the surface will receive further coats of brighter colors anyway. Here you are aiming to get all the crevices and cracks nice and dark. |
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The remainder of the lava steps will be layers of solids and mixtures. You want to aim for the edges of areas, and the raised portions that are modeled to be liquid rock.
This step is a 50/50 mix of Scab Red and Red Gore. |
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| Here we move up to solid Red Gore. Still hard to see any detail coming out. |
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| A little more detail shows here, 50/50 Red Gore and Blood Red. |
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| Solid Blood Red on this step, and you can begin to clearly see the areas that are going to be highlighted. |
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| After the above layer of blood red, things need to start to move a bit more slowly. The transition from reds to oranges requires a bit more. This layer of highlights was 75/25 Blood Red and Blazing Orange. |
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| Next up is a 50/50 of Blood Red and Blazing Orange. |
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| And 25/75 Blood Red and Blazing Orange. Details are really starting to pop out now. |
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| Solid Blazing Orange. |
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| 75/25 Blazing Orange and Golden Yellow. |
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| 50/50 Blazing Orange and Golden Yellow. |
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| 25/75 Blazing Orange and Golden Yellow. At this point a focus on the extreme highlights is established. |
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| 10/90 Blazing Orange and Golden Yellow. |
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| The final layer of highlights on the lava is solid Golden Yellow. This only touches on the tips of certain areas, and at the very edges of the solid surfaces. |
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| With the lava done, its time to start on the rocks. These are best done dark to contrast the lava nicely. I start with a base coat of Chaos Black. |
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| A simple dry brush of Codex Grey brings out the highlights on the rocks. If you want, a thin black wash could be used to tone them down a bit, but I like this a bit brighter. |
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| Finally, ring the base with Chaos Black for a final touch. |
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And here is a picture of the whole group of bases that I did for this Tutorial. Notice that there are some details that weren't on the example base above. Primarily the bubbles and the popped bubbles. Both of these are treated like extreme edges for the purpose of highlights. For the bubbles, you wan to leave the immediate area around the base of it dark, and highlight to the top. For the popped ones, you want to run the highlights straight up the edge to the top, and leave the interior dark.
Good luck with your own lava bases! |
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