Going with the Floe

Just starting off on some lava bases for my Kings or War Salamanders army. I wanted the units to have some influence of fire but not be on the slightly stayed and cliched volcanic island. For my Ember sprites, Fire Elementals, Greater Elemental or anything else that is borne of fire I never really like the concept that they were just floating around on a cloud of smoke. I wanted them to be part of an endless stream of molten rock moving along the ground which they were a part of. Originally thinking of lush Hawaiian islands with lava slowly pouring through them, my club mate Jake pointed me towards Yana Dag which also summed up the look perfectly. While not Lava the flames from the natural gas fit the theme and were a nice point of reference. 

After a lot of thinking I used the Geek Gaming basing compound to create the lava, trying to layer it on thick and create an overflowing effect. Expecting to have to do a lot of work it turned out that was it! Just let it dry, seal it with the matt sealant and then onto painting. I put some fine sand around the rest of the base after applying layer of filler to stop it being a uniform flat surface

 

Painting was pretty straight forward, I usually start with a black undercoat but as I was feeling lazy I just sprayed using a can of GW's Mepthiston red. I then raided my paints for a combination to use for the lava, working light to dark to allow me to layer.

I used Vallejo's Ivory sparingly in the folds of the material that I wanted to be the brightest. This was followed by some old Citadel Colour ink but I think any really bright yellow would suffice. 

The next step was to progressively stipple lighter colours over the top. Starting with another old Citadel Paint I used Hobgoblin Orange generously over the base including overlapping the yellow parts. I used a big old brush and stippled the paint on rather than dry brushing. I wanted the paint to not just get onto the edges of the texture but start to blend with the previous, lighter colours. 

 

Adding more depth with Citadel's Mournfang Brown. overlapping progressively less of the earlier colours.

Finally adding Citadel's Rhinox Hide sparingly to show the parts that were meant to be a darker, cooled crust. 

The burnt Grass was WWS's Scorched 4mm tufts followed some normal green tufts around the edge to simulate the grass being burnt as the lava progresses.