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morning dakka,

what's the best way to paint flames/fire onto a black surface? the way I've done this in the past is to base coat black, then do the outline of my flames in a couple coats of mechrite red, then paint a layer inside that outline with a few coats of orange, then a smaller layer inside that with several coats of yellow and finally a small area of bright yellow near the bottom. while this works, it's slow and I end up with a textured surface after all those layers of paint.

is there a smarter way to do this? I do have an airbrush, though I'm not very skilled with it beyond base coating and such.

Perhaps using a basecoat of white in the shape of the flame itself, then layer your reds and oranges over that.
Red is a transparent color and a real pain to work with over black.

Ditto
Or try Deneb Stone / Zandri Dust instead of white.
You could also use the old inks over this instead of paint to keep the layers thin.

I've been working on some legion of the damned lately and I've found foundation/base paints to be my savior.

Very simply, my method is a lot like yours, but I thin my paints a little, so after 2-5 coats you don't see built up paint at all.

Over black I base the flames Mephiston Red. Highlight with whatever the foundation/base orange is now, I used Macharius Orange, as I still had some and a final highlight with the new base yellow...think its Averland Sunset I used?

And thats it really. Just be careful on where you highlight the flames as fire shouldn't have a uniform highlight, its ok to make it a bit abstract in the highlights.

I have some pics but they are on my camera at home.

I agree with the early response-- paint your flames in white and then use yellow at the tip and then blend red up into the yellow.

FarseerAndyMan wrote:
I agree with the early response-- paint your flames in white and then use yellow at the tip and then blend red up into the yellow.

fire works the other way 'round, actually - brighter/hotter at the core and cooler/darker at the tips. so, white in the center, dark red at the edges.

starting with a white-ish base coat sounds reasonable and was something I was considering. I'm also toying with the idea of base-coating the whole thing white, laying down all my colors and then adding the back outside of the flames as the final step. any thoughts on whether that would be easier?

edit: for reference, here's the sort of look I'm going for (image by Impossibrutality) :

Flames over black is a very common request int he custom motor bike market.
Depending on wither you want 'true flames' or 'hotrod' flames' (hotrod would be more cartoony outlines than realistic blends and shapes)

True fire is done with transparent white, and candy (glaze) colours of red and yellow in many many many excruciating layers. True candy paints will look black over black, and bright colour over white where as many washes, glazes and transparent colours dont quite show the black as clean as youd like. Theyre actually dyes suspended in clear lacquer, and need to be sealed either side with intercoat clears.

Hotrod flames would be taped out, base coated and detailed, then outlined with a pinstriping brush. This would compared more to the drop pod pictured above's style with hard lined edges. (Looks great by the way Varl.. youve done a great job on that!)
edit; hehehe my bad I thought that was your own drop pod varl

HairySticks wrote:
...
edit; hehehe my bad I thought that was your own drop pod varl

heh, not yet but I'll have one rather similar very soon :p

The sides of the drop pods are nicely flat and devoid of details that make taping too awkward, only the size would make it difficult... you could spray the bottom half white, tape the flame areas off with some carefully cut masking tape (fineline would be better, then do light coats of black spray to get the to basecoat before doing the colouring with a brush only be sure to go lightly with the black spray or yould get a hard built up edge where the tape line was, or worse wet paint seeping under it (happens with low quality masking tapes)

I decided to base with vallejo gray primer, draw in the outline of the flames with pencil and then do the coloring from there. I'll do black as the final step. will post pics when it's done (assuming it comes out ok :p)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ok, here's a series of images showing what I've done so far starting with the pencil sketch and ending with the last step of color. I still have to add the black above the flames, of course.



as you can see, not the greatest transitions between color steps. I also think doing that final light yellow step was probably a mistake; mixed in a bit too much white. any thoughts on how I can smooth out the transitions between each color step? I was thinking a wash of some sort might help, but I haven't a clue what color would be appropriate or if that would even work. any other ideas?

An orange glaze would tone down the super light yellow and smooth the transition a bit.

Over black :/ that's ahh hmm not normal. Try going base coat of rakkarth flesh or w/e its called then work up to white. Then paint it all yellow then work your way up with orange, red, black.

I think theres not enough yellow and too much red, if you look to the Salamanders pod you linked earlier, whomever painted that has their yellow section reaching right up into the licks of the flame, and transitions very quickly into a nice bright red/orange. The red itself isn't actually very red, its definatley a tad to the orangey side of things, perhaps Wild rider red in citadel colours, while your red seems more primary red sort of shade like the old blood red or mephistion red is.

The yellow can be tricky as its got to be a warm yellow, GW Cassandora Yellow wash has a warm orangey yellowness to it, might be worth a look at making a glaze from it to help blend the transitions together too
Ofcourse though, with fire, different fuels look different, and in 40k we may be on any number of fictional planets burnign any number of fictional fuels... the fire could burn any colour any heat you want (for example potassium will give a purple flame when it comes into contact with h2o ) hehe

what would be a good ratio of paint/water/glaze medium for mixing up a glaze? the options I have are (from the old GW line) blazing orange, golden yellow or sunburst yellow.

Varl-- I like doing "Cartoonie" hot rod flames...the yellow at the tip looks cooler to me thats all. But yeah fire does kinda look the way you described.

Has anyone ever tried to make "ghostly" flames?

I have and it looks cool...use a series of blues and whites instead of yellow and reds...looks really spooky..