Tutorial: how I do paint lava bases.

Hello to everyone, I recently painted a bunch of miniatures from Massive Darkness and I found an interesting problem, they already had bases.

With some work I should be able to cut the dwarves from the bases, but I am a lazy man and I tried something different. 

Painted lava bases.

I already made some lava bases in the past with cork and a similar paint scheme, but this time paint only (almost).

Here the recipe. 

Step 1. Red background. To tell the truth you can also go with a yellow one. But I found a red background works better because it makes the yellow a little warmer. 

Step 2. Yellow blobs. Use wet paint to better blend the colors. In this photo you can also see a small bubble made with a nail art charm glued on the base. Do not worry if your paint makes some bubbles, it helps with the final result. 

Step 3. Orange between the yellow and the red. If you can wet blend the colors together, if you like a safer approach simply paint the orange over some red and yellow. The different background will tint the orange a little. If 

Step 4. Quick red wash to better blend the colors. 

Step 5. Flat black "obsidian" rocks. 

Step 6. Dark gray edge light on the black.

Also draw some scrapes on the black. 

Step 7. Smaller light gray edge light. 

Step 8. Pure white spot light and bubbles on the lava. 

And here the dwarves. 

I hope you can find this quick tutorial helpful. 

Stalagmites: tutorial

Hello guys, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas full of love and gifts.

Well, back to business.

Looking for gifts I finally found some big cone-shaped seashells. I think they are used for fish tanks, but we'll use them for something better.

Stalagmites! (or stalactites if you glue them on the ceiling).

First of all what do you need?

• The cheapest air dry modelling clay you can find (if you are a gluegun master you can use it)
• cone shaped seashells
• something to use as a base (I used pressed cardboard)
• sand
• glue
• paint

In this tutorial I'll show you how to make stone, ice and lava terrain. But you can use these shells to make some organic looking terrain too, maybe an alien breeding nest, or crystal towers. If you are thinking to use one of these shell as a base for a Roper or some other creature... please let me know if you made it.

Cave stalagmites tutorial
1) make a little blob of clay on your base and put the shells in the order you like. I prefer to have the big sheels a little on the background.

2) sculpt the clay as you like, you can texturize it with a rock or tin foil. I used the back of a brush to make some holes. I also add some big rocks around.

3) flock as you like. I used two different sands to have a mix of small and medium rocks.
 

4) paint it. I used only drybrush from this one. In order: black primer, dark brown, sienna brown, dark gray, light gray, white.

The technique is the same if you want to make different terrain. For example:

Icicles

The difference is only in the paint, you can check my igloo tutorial to know how I painted the ice. The short version is: white coat, cyan wash, drybrush white, fake snow. Let's see how they look painted and with Santa's friends.

 

 Also, about the igloo, here a bonus figure, the saberthoot tiger toy I showed in the tutorial.
I think it is pretty amazing.

 

Last, lava terrain. Again, same technique. This time I used the same colors as for my fire elemental. White basecoat, yellow, red wash, drybrush yellow, drybrush black, drybrush dark gray.

And finally, a shot with everything. As stated before, you can put the shells upside down to make stalactites.

Some more small terrain and an elemental

Some small stuff  today, some terrain, some experiment for a new lava effect.

A little dragon skeleton obstacle made from scrapped toy dinosaur parts.

A couple of gargoyle of unknow origin. I found them at a thrift store, do you know where they came from?

And for last a Gormiti  toy repainted as a magma elemental, I'm still working on finding a decent fire painting technique, but I think the cork base is pretty good.