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I'm just looking for some opinions on my attempt at painting obsidian.

when you see this, do you see an obsidian obelisk?

Obsidian is near perfect black (sometimes with a bit of color, but very dark surfaces (similar techniques to painting NMM would work well, here) with sharp edges-- it flakes and tends to shatter like glass (curves and points-- stuff is very sharp and it's obvious when handling it why it was used for arrowheads)... while your column looks nice and reads as some sort of dark stone column, it doesn't have the shape or color of obsidian, sorry...

Sorry, I wasn't clear. You're right it's not the correct shape or texture, I was meaning more from a painting perspective. I have a Hordes mini that I want to paint like he is living obsidian and figured I'd give a go making a piece of terrain to test the painting.

I like how the blue looks, but I'd mute it a little if it needs to be specifically "obsidian".

If it can be just "blackish rocks", then I wouldn't change the paint scheme.

 Ouze wrote:
I like how the blue looks, but I'd mute it a little if it needs to be specifically "obsidian".

If it can be just "blackish rocks", then I wouldn't change the paint scheme.

Yeah, this-- the colors are also not what I imagine when thinking of obsidian.

For reference:

raw (or rough, not sure) obsidian


finished obsidian


It's very dark, with most light being clean, sharp highlights from reflection.

I don't suppose it really needs to be obsidian specifically, but that was the only shiny black rock I could think of. I agree that the highlights are a little ott, I got carried away with the airbrush. I made a mistake and just tried to cover it up by keeping on going.

Thanks for the feedback though.

Try a very deep black with very fine edging done in OSL style (not every edge, but the edges that all face a specific direction) in a deep blue.Then hit a few of those edges and corners with a white highlite. Finally gloss coat the entire thing.
For the edging, less is usually more.

Practice on some bits of sprue (plain and some chunks glued together to give you irregular patterns) and post those pics.