Painting beautiful Lava

Hi all!

Hope everyone is having a great week so far and looking forward to the holidays? 😊

Today I’d like to share a tutorial about painting lava. With the first snow in London finally falling out of the sky a few days ago, I thought it would be nice to paint something warm! 😃

Let’s get into it:

1) Start with basecoating the whole are with white. I’ve used AK Interactive White which has very nice coverage and opacity.

2) Next, paint the entire area that will be lava with Yriel Yellow. This can be done by applying 2-3 thin coats of paint.

3) Mix Evil Sunz Scarlet 1:1 with Yriel Yellow and start glazing (glaze is basically paint mixed in a 1:3 ratio with water) it around the rocks and other bits that are one the base. I’ve also decided to break the big surface that has no rocks (on the right hand side) with a line or this orange paint mix to make it more interesting. As you can see, I’ve made the warm orange color here about 5mm wide. You can make it bigger or smaller, depending on the size of the base you are working on, but generally, I like to keep a 1:1 ration between the width of the rock and the orange area around it.

4) Now we will add a more red tone, using a glaze of Evil Sunz Scarlet. It has to be smaller (thinner in width) than the last coat, so we have a smooth transition from orange to red. Apply this closer to the rocks.

5) Next up, we will basecoat the skull and the rocks. The rocks are a mix of Thunderhawk Blue 1:1 with Abaddon Black. The skull is just pure Evil Sunz Scarlet.

6) Glaze the sides of the rocks with Evil Sunz Scarlet. This will show, that the rocks are heating up from the lava.

7) Add a glaze of Abaddon Black mixed 1:1 with Evil Sunz Scarlet towards the end of the previously red lava area on the right side. Also add this on the surface of the skull, but not on the sides of it, as similarly to the rocks, we want to show, that it is heating up from the lava.

8) Now we will go back to adding more brightness to the lava. We will do that by adding a layer of Ivory, from AK Interactive, in the middle of the bright yellow area. This can be done with any other bright beige color. This will be showing, that the lava is the hottest in those areas.

9) Next up, add a layer of white in the middle of the bright beige we have added in the previous step.

10) Highlight the skull, using a thin glaze of Evil Sunz Scarlet. This can be added on the entirety of the skull.

11) The final step will be adding a glaze of black on the right side of the lava, to show that the lava is cooling down in there.

And that is it! It’s a beautiful effect if I may say so myself, and it can be achieved without any special fancy paints!

Please do try it out as it is extremely simple and fun!

I really hope you like it 😊

Cheers,

Mamikon