Heat up your hobby with this tutorial on how to paint crackling lava bases! Showcase your army’s red hot rage by basing your models with lava!
If you are burning up with anger while painting, just give yourself over to Khorne. Just kidding, unless you want to learn how to paint lava bases! This tutorial will give you a better idea of how you too can paint lava themed bases for your miniatures.
First, make sure that you touch up any paint that may have chipped off on your black base. This will ensure that your other paints stick well on the surface of your base. Then hit your base with a light drybrush of grey.
Once completed, we are ready to start building up our lava effect. Reaper Orange Brown is our first color here as it is an ochre color that will add a deep layer of glow. Use your paintbrush with the Orange Brown, getting a nice solid base coat of paint in all the cracks where your lava would be.
This is basically a pre-shade using an analog brush for control. You could just load up your Airbrush for this step as well.
Next up is Army Painter Dragon Red, applied using an airbrush. Make a nice solid pass of red over the previous orange color. This will deepen the hue of the red and not drown it out over the black basecoat.
Next, use some Citadel Fire Dragon Bright, working from the center of the cracks and all throughout the lava base. Keep your airbrush very tight to the middle of the cracks, giving a brighter effect of glowing lava.
Pallid Wych Flesh is then used in choice raised spots to get even more of a pre-shade on your base for the next step.
Then spray a little Flash Gitz Yellow next in the pastel raised areas. This will add a final pop to your lava base and will give it that red hot glow effect. If the edges and blends are not looking right and you want more contrast, reload the red from earlier and hit the outer dark cracks with some of that as a cut-back.
Once you are happy with the result, the last thing do to is either use some thin coats Lamentors yellow or Bloodletter red glazes to pull it all together. Then apply gloss varnish to the cracks for the wet lava look!
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