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Ahoy there folks, as you may already know, I'm trying to get a Legion of the Damned Army up and running but I'm running into a major problem as I tried tonight to paint my first figurine, well this is a might embarrassing considering what I need to accomplish, but...


How the bloody hell does one achieve that nice transitional flame effect on the shoulderpads and armor?

I tried looking at the space marine book and all it shows is just a picture of a nice flame effect starting with a solid red base and then transition to orange/yellow/white as it moves up. Does anyone know of any general layering or transition technique to get this down?

I've been trying at it now for a couple of hours and all it looks like so far is as if a nurgling threw up Boston Clam Chowder all over my marine's feet...

Any help would be deeply appreciated as always!

Ok , it´s hard to explain and I don´t have any pic´z but I will try to find some of my work with flames .

But the general is layering as U say , but maybe take things easy , do U have any pic´z of U´r work so far ...?

I think it will be easier if U show us some of the work and never worry , we all learn , all the time ...

Unskul

try starting with a layer of red, lightly highlighting/drybrushing it with orange, then doing the same with yellow (but progressively smaller areas), then eventually work to white.

ill try to illustrate

1st layer : RRRRR
2nd layer: OOOO
3rd layer: YYY
4th layer: W

with the white being the tip of the flame, remember to do the white VERY lightly, preferably watered down

Ok thegreatcow I found some pic´z and I opened a new post for U with My Ork´z , Waaagh !! Unskul .
Check it out , although it was some time ago I made those flames , I think U can see and also adapt U´r own technique ... I hoped it helps ?

Thanks so much lads, this is my first painting attempt so yeah I'm terrified as all hell. I'll have a pic up of my first chap of the LOTD, I'll cross post the pic in the P&M Blog forum too, thanks so much for all the help!

And here's my first marine that I've ever painted this evening, I was trying to aim for the flamey maw of doom with this chap, but yeah I think I got more of melted orange creme here...ah well, first time for everything!

When i started my sallis army i had the teach my self to do flames.

I did.

Scab red in the shape of the flame and added more yellow to the mix layering up to pure yellow at the tips.

Here' s a pic if it helps for reference

First problem I can see is that your fire is backwards! Fire is lightest at it's core, extending to red at the edges, and the predominant colour is orange.



Take that fire for example. Start with a very dark orange, and add more orange as you work your way to the centre, then yellow, the finally a little white, aiming to end with a very pale yellow colour (put not pure white).

Grandmaster wrote:When i started my sallis army i had the teach my self to do flames.

I did.

Scab red in the shape of the flame and added more yellow to the mix layering up to pure yellow at the tips.

Here' s a pic if it helps for reference

Oh man that looks awesome! Exactly what I was shooting for! Thanks a bunch for the example!

GCMandrake wrote:First problem I can see is that your fire is backwards! Fire is lightest at it's core, extending to red at the edges, and the predominant colour is orange.



Take that fire for example. Start with a very dark orange, and add more orange as you work your way to the centre, then yellow, the finally a little white, aiming to end with a very pale yellow colour (put not pure white).

Yeah I'm still trying to get my layering down without making it look like I used plumbers putty for the paint, man it's tricky getting the consistency right with this bloody paints!

Half the time if I water it down too much it beads like an ink wash and runs all over the place and the other time it gets all clumpy and sticky. Really tricky to find a happy medium... :(

Just a suggestion.... Think scale here. The models you are painting are quite small. You dont HAVE to blend. Try a few that are just one layer of color on top of another. The eye will naturally attempt to blend similar colors.

Just a thought.

ender502

ender502 wrote:Just a suggestion.... Think scale here. The models you are painting are quite small. You dont HAVE to blend. Try a few that are just one layer of color on top of another. The eye will naturally attempt to blend similar colors.

Just a thought.

ender502

Aye thanks mate, I'm going to give that a shot with the advice posted here. Methinks I'll definitely have to give your method a try, I've got about 80ish figures to paint and I've definitely got to speed things up a bit O_O

I paint my basic pattern in white, go over it with yellow (not all the way to the top), the orange inside the yellow, and lastly red inside the orange.

Here's a dreadnaught that I did a long time ago. Banner was a placeholder - that was replaced too.

Interesting that all the fire on this page is backwards. Doesn't anyone else stare at fire?

Time to fix this topic with some correct fire! Does this make me a pyrofectionist? I don't know. Apologies to 56kers.

Oh dear god that's awesome!


That's pretty much exactly how I want my land raider to look like! Holy bojangles that looks great! Did you use an airbrush for those effects? At least on the landraider anyway....

That is so freaking sweet.

His Shoulderpads are on fire.

Believe me, I wish that was mine. It's not though sadly. Looking at it though, it's guess it was done with an airbrush yes, though with a bit of work, it would be entirely possible to produce something similar with a brush. On a tank of that size, it just requires slow and calm blending to have a smooth transition.

I tend to start with White, then go yellow, orange, red, dark red, drybrushing my way out, one of the reasons I do this is because yellow is a tough color to get good coverage with..

Before doing to the flame job, start at beginning.

Remove the mould lines and area on shoulder pads where it was clipped off sprue. You need to do this! Great disservice to models if you don't.

Stare at that landraider for like 15 minutes. See how the blending comes together at each level.

Helps if you are skilled with airbrush.

Dang, man - where were those jetbike pics when I was working on inspiration for my Ravenwing army! That thing's friggin' brilliant - not to mention the glow effects on the lava...dang...

@ GCMandrake -

chuffing Nora - those are awesome. hope you don't mind but can i save some of those pictures for future reference & drooling over please?

Of course, but they aren't mine! I can't stress that enough.

The Land Raider was by Bobinator - http://www.coolminiornot.com/browse/page/1/submitter/bobinator

And the Lord on a Jet Bike was by Matt Cexwish - http://demonwinner.free.fr/peintre.php?id_peintre=564

More updates with two more Marines

I just can't seem to get the transitions down at all. I do fine with the red/orange/yellow layer but as soon as I add white, it overpowers the others and I get what looks like white splotches all over my flames. To say this is annoying is an understatement.


Center one was my first one






I'm getting the feeling that honestly I should just finish with yellow rather than white, or am I doing something wrong here? Any help would be deeply appreciated!

Your white looks way too thick, and I think that's part of the problem here with the splotchiness. When you're laying down multiple layers of paint like you are here, you have to make sure they are as thin as you can make them while still getting coverage over the black, which with yellows and whites is going to be tough. You might want to experiment with laying down a thin coat of white where you are going to paint the flames, but that's going to be a lot of extra work and will probably end up in furthering your thickness problem.

It also looks like the flames themselves are a bit blotchy, try this technique to paint them (if it's not what you are doing already). Get a brush with a very good point and then start at the base of the flame, pressing hard enough that the full width of the brush comes into contact with the shoulder pad. Drag the brush up the pad, but as you do squiggle the brush a little from side to side in an irregular fashion and slowly lessen the pressure, gradually pulling the brush away from the pad until it breaks contact, forming the point of that particular bit of flame. Work your way across the pad, varying the quickness in which you pull the brush up and away, creating irregularity in your flame pattern. Then you simply go back over the same areas with each progressively lighter color, leaving some of the underlying color showing as you do. From the pictures, it looks like blending may be a bit advanced for you at this point (not meant to be disparaging, I am no where near being good enough to really blend anything either), so if the variance looks too extreme for you, you could try a little ink to see if you can get the colors to wash into each other a bit.

This will result in only a single brush stroke per color per area, (assuming your paint is giving you good enough coverage) and will result in a less textured look which I think is another part of your problem.

I might try practicing this technique on sheets of paper first before you continue on your marines, that way you won't have to go back and strip as you get your technique down.

Hope that makes some sense.

dont bother watering down your paints yet, just do lots of thin layers of dry brushing.

Thanks so much everyone for all the help!

I'm going to give it another shot and try the drybrushing technique. Heck if anything, trying to get this down right is giving me great motivation to paint my minis! I figure everyone should go through flame boot camp fi they're facing painter's depression.

In WD 341 the june 2008 copy (the one with the eye on it) on page 99 thers a simple way on how to paint flames and it looks good...also the ghost rider bike OMG OMG OMG that looks amazing also what model does the skull on the nike come from i cant remember and i need 2 =\

Thanks again for all the advice folks, I took another crack at it today and tried a Rocket Launcher Marine this time

In addition to drybrushing the flames (I think they came out the best so far) I also did some drybrushing of white all over the place to give the whole "aged dusty armor" look thing going.

Here some comparo shots built in order from left to right:








And a solo shot of the RL Guy







Sorry for the mold lines on him he I think was my 3rd ever model built and I must have forgotten to clean him up when I started painting. :(

I second the technique used by the Salamander player above, as I did the same thing for my salamanders (that bike and land raider are superb but lets be serious, not everyone has time or patience or skill to pull that off).

For troops:
Paint the red onto the black. This will keep the red from looking pink. Use this to layout the shape of the flames. This serves as a nice undercoat for the other lighter colors. You can give a scond coat but leave the first coat on the tips (or just use one layer, works fine actually). I used blood red since my flames were symbolic and not

Then paint on orange. I use fiery orange, although it is being discontinued and is a bit to neon anyway. Any decent orange will work. This should be the majority of the flame, especially the central part (or in the case of the legs, the foot). I use one layer.

Then paint yellow. This should be minimal, at the 'source' of the flame.

Use white only on larger areas, for troops I usualy don't even use white or use a dot perhaps.

larger areas is similar although I used a base of bestial brown so as to have a smoother red.

Example pics of mine (nowhere near as nice as what is shown but then again my technique is straight forward easy):