Wayshuba wrote:
Excellent find. Though most artists who paint "realistic fire" use a black or deep brown base coat (always) followed by progressive white coats where the color will be on the fire. This creates a sense of depth and translucency to the fire that is not apparent in that model.

Here is a great example of some amazingly realistic painted fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuVnK2FnrJE

With some adjustment, this can be done with a brush painting with thinned layers of paint along with drybrushing.

If you watch a lot of the examples of professional painters the color sequence is a base of black or dark brown, followed by building the base of varying degrees of white, followed by yellow, followed by a 1:1 mix of yellow and white, followed by orange. At no point in all the tutorials or examples I have seen is red, ever, ever used.