Painting Tutorial: HOT Lava Bases

[iNsOmNiAc'S dReAm]

Well ladies and gents, ALOT of you have demanded it and I think I put it off long enough =P, so I finally got my act together and decided to put up my long awaited lava base tutorial. This will be a pretty lengthy tutorial and I will probably have to do this in multiple post.

First things first, is base construction. The materials you will need are:

-cork
-cork in sheet form
-PVA glue ( white elmers glue works just fine )
-an old paintbrush
-a hobby knife
-blank bases

I love to work with cork for my bases. Its cheap and easy to use and, for this project it has the right kind of texture I want for my lava rocks. Cork can be found just about anywhere and for the sheet cork you can find pretty good sized rolls for less then $4 bucks, enough cork for 3 armies and then some.

Step 1:



Take some of your sheet cork and break it up into random shapes of various sizes, be sure to have a few ' large ' peices suitable for you mini to stand on. Then take your hobby knife to your other peice of cork and break it up into tiny peices like so.

Step2:

Arrange your cork around your base, being sure to leave large cracks and spaces between rocks for your lava flow. Dont be afraid to stack rocks to add height and depth to the base, just be sure to leave enough of a flat surface for your mini to stand on. Generously 'paint' on your pva glue to the bottom of each peice and press and hold it firmly in place till it dries.

Step3:

To help the cork recieve paint better, I like to paint over all cork surfaces with some watered down PVA glue. Once that dries Primer the entire base with chaos black. and then you are ready for painting.

continued in next post

[iNsOmNiAc'S dReAm]

Part 2

Before we continue with painting lets study a picture of a real lava flow...

As we see here Lava isnt red like how it is in cartoons, but HOT WHITE and darkens in color as it cools and eventually cools into black rock.

To achieve this look we will need these colors and materials:

-Scab Red
-Red Gore
-Blazing Orange
-Sunburst Yellow
-Skull white
-Chaos Black
-Codex Grey
-Eye dropper filled with clean water
-Cardboard Backed Glass Pallet ( or a wax paper if you prefer )

Step 1:

Lay down the foundation with some scab red. Be sure to get in every little crack and crevis, and dont worry too much about neatness at this point.

Step 2:

put a few drops of Red Gore on your pallet and thin it down to a skim milk/cream like consistancy with water from your eye dropper. This is very important as it will give your paint some translucency, and will allow some color from below show through. Paint over most of the lava flow, just leaving the very edges around the rocks alone.

Step 3:

Take your mixture and add just a bit of Blazing Orange, and thin it down some more if need be. I cant tell you the exact mixture as I mix by eye but at this point it should be much more red then orange. From the edges inward you want to paint in smaller and smaller areas, leaving the last color showing around the edges.

Step 4:

Add 2 drops of Blazing orange to your mixture. At this point we are going to try and simulate the flow of lava by painting streaks that follow the curvature of the rocks.

Step 5:

Add 1-2 drops of Blazing Orange and 1 drop of Sunburst Yellow, remember to keep your mixture thinned. Now we are going to detail the flow of lava a bit more. Start by highlighting what youve done in step 4, and add a few smaller lines aswell.

Step 6:

Make a thinned down mixture of Sunburst yellow and blazing orange, and highlight what you've done in step 5.

Step 7:

Highlight the " hottest " part of the lava with a straight mixture of Sunburst yellow and skull white.

Step 8:

Hightlight your hot spots with a small dot of thinned down skull white, to really give it that 'glow'.

Step 9:

Youre lava is almost finished, but right now its just a lil too orange.. To dull that down a bit and to blend together your shading we need to do a glaze with your base red. To do that, take some red gore and thin it down till its almost like colored water. Then just glaze over all of the lava entirely, you may have to do 2 coats.

Step 10:

The final step would be to clean up your rocks some, and LIGHTLY dry brush over them with some codex grey. To really bring your base to life and give the illusion that its really glowing you could do some object source lighting on the edges of the rocks.

Well Im hope this gives you folks an idea of how I accomplish my lava bases. This is only one way of doing it and is just a lil something for you to expand on. Sorry if the pics got a lil blurry in the end, but hopefully you found this tut useful and could understand my mindless gibberish regardless =P

Good luck and have fun with it.

[Petey1016]

ooo this way looks easier than Davidus' i may have to try it.

Nice tut

[Krom_stormbrow]

+rep for you.

Nice tut. To red for my taste, I think you should have gone more yellowy - white.

None the less, I like and executed well and I will find reason to use this.

[Mart007]

Lovely Tut, you know I'm going to find this useful fo my Avatar! thank you and +rep+

[Rellik]

very nice! pa'oe'oe( sp? ) huh

[hairyyahoo]

i'd have finished it at the stage before the glaze personally as that stage looks more like the photo you showed us.

+rep, big time!

[SteveBerenyi]

+ rep from me as well!

[Brother Warchild]

Nice job,gonna have to give this one a try.

[Zeb[edee]]

Tyvm! I would give you rep but i cant =\

Meh, Thanks =D

[iNsOmNiAc'S dReAm]

Originally Posted by hairyyahoo

i'd have finished it at the stage before the glaze personally as that stage looks more like the photo you showed us.

+rep, big time!

That was a bad pic actually =P, I took it while the glaze was still drying. It looks much better when its completely dry, and its a necessary step to effectively blend all the colors together.

[Lord Commander Erus]

Veyr nice tut! +rep, and I will have to remember this in the days to come.

[Colonel Marbi Chora]

Oooooooh, shiney base.... I have to try this out!

[TerminatorinHell]

this will be awesome for my to be ryoto inq scale model