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I am currently working on a Chaos Dwarf army. I am putting them all on lava bases but have had trouble making the bases bright. Whenever I paint the bases it comes out very dull on all the colors. I don't want the whole thing bright just the color near the center, indicating the hottest part of the lava. Currently each base has a piece of corkboard in the center for the model to stand on. Then there is lava surrounding it. The way I paint this is very simplistic. Paint the whole base a full red. Then from the center outwards I wet blend a lighter red to yellow. There are about four paints in the transition. I want the red near the rock to be very bright, showing the heat. It keeps coming out dull and unrealistic. Has anyone had any success with something like this?

Brighter (not just lighter - you want intense color) paints tend to work best - this stuff is glowing, after all. Here is James Wappel using Vallejo's fluorescent paints (among others) to great effect on a lava base (topped with a mostly naked model, if that's an issue from where you're viewing).

You'll notice that there isn't that much actual red visible in the finished shots. I think that's part of the success of his technique - red is integral to the process, but doesn't really appear in the final product, on its own. It tints the various colors around it, giving a sense of slightly cooler peripheries by both darkening and dulling the colors. Fluorescent yellows and oranges dominate the actual lava, which is what really conveys the sense of heat. I also love how he mottles and breaks up the lava, which many people don't do (smooth blends seem to be the order of the day for most "pro" lava I come across), but that's somewhat tangential.

I've seen lovely lava painted with the usual red>orange>yellow>white transitions, of course, but they never have quite the same punch, to my eye. In those cases, color distribution becomes even more crucial, as the paints are dull by nature - any sense of glowing brightness is entirely illusory, requiring no small degree of skill to manufacture.

TLDR: If you want to improve your results without having to change your method, change your paints.

Might just be me being old and all...but I tend to throw back to Hot Lead for fire/lava. He wasnt the first to use several of the techniques, but he was the first to use them well (IMO).

http://hot-lead.org/

Read the tutorials, look through the galleries (with more write ups). Plenty of lava, fire and other ideas too.

For me though, I paint my hot spots in inks and clears over a clear acrylic base with putty for crusted lava. On the table they are sort of ho-hum. However, I have a lighted display stand that the bases sit on and it lights the base from the bottom.

 oadie wrote:
Brighter (not just lighter - you want intense color) paints tend to work best - this stuff is glowing, after all. Here is James Wappel using Vallejo's fluorescent paints (among others) to great effect on a lava base (topped with a mostly naked model, if that's an issue from where you're viewing).

You'll notice that there isn't that much actual red visible in the finished shots. I think that's part of the success of his technique - red is integral to the process, but doesn't really appear in the final product, on its own. It tints the various colors around it, giving a sense of slightly cooler peripheries by both darkening and dulling the colors. Fluorescent yellows and oranges dominate the actual lava, which is what really conveys the sense of heat. I also love how he mottles and breaks up the lava, which many people don't do (smooth blends seem to be the order of the day for most "pro" lava I come across), but that's somewhat tangential.

I've seen lovely lava painted with the usual red>orange>yellow>white transitions, of course, but they never have quite the same punch, to my eye. In those cases, color distribution becomes even more crucial, as the paints are dull by nature - any sense of glowing brightness is entirely illusory, requiring no small degree of skill to manufacture.

TLDR: If you want to improve your results without having to change your method, change your paints.

would these be the model color florescents ? is this the go to product?

i might have to try some out.

Those are the ones. Wouldn't say they're THE go to product, as I haven't really seen all that many people using them. They're what I would (would - haven't had call to paint lava, so I haven't tried them out, personally) use, though, and you can see what they potentially bring to the table in the linked post (he's also done other lava bases and a pretty cool cracked lava fire elemental, if you browse through the blog a bit more). Totally up to you if you want to pick a bottle or two up and muck around with them. As mentioned, there are other ways to paint lava, but I think they'd be worth a shot, especially if you can get them locally or tack them on to another order to avoid/mitigate shipping costs.