Written by Beau Cameron
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10 March 2010
Hello!
One of my first White Dwarves had an army of Legion of The Damned that had these flames beautifully painted on, freehand. Not a single molded flame in sight. Frankly I was gob-smacked and I never forgot it. So when I came around to doing my Salamanders, I was adamant I would finally give painting fire a shot. It took a lot of playing around to get it right but I’m under the impression its worked out rather well and that’s what I’m going to be sharing in this tutorial.
The way they are painted, is what’s referred to as “True Fire”. For those who are wondering, this means that visually it is made to look like real fire, orange at its tips and progressively brighter shades of yellow till it’s white hot.
It’s a good idea to have some reference material. Being able to shade and blend various colours is all well and good, but for flame effect to work, the basic shape is very important. Pictures of Flames on models in books or on the net can be very handy. Some of my work has even used fast food packaging as a reference!
For these flames you will need the following colours: Solar Macharius Orange, Fiery Orange, Golden Yellow, Skull White. These are all Citadel paints but equivalent colours would be easy enough to obtain if you prefer a different brand. Also, this uses Fiery Orange, which you probably have noticed, is out of production. If you’re not lucky enough to have a few pots of it lying around then Blazing Orange mixed with small amounts of skull white can produce a very similar shade of orange which is just as good.
With that out of the way we can begin!
Start by using Solar Macharius Orange as the base of the flame. Using a Detail or Fine Detail brush, carefully paint shape of the flame. I find it best to start with an outline of the flames then filling them in. Because it is a foundation paint, Solar Macharius is quite thick so it can pay to wet your brush a tiny bit just to help apply the paint smoothly.
Then, once this has dried completely, a layer of Fiery orange is painted over the entirety of the Solar Macharius base. This should be a nice, bold shade of orange. This can be difficult to achieve if you haven’t previously used the Solar Macharius Orange.
Then, using a fine detail brush, paint within the area you painted Fiery orange with a layer of Golden Yellow. However, try to leave some Fiery Orange showing around the edges and tips of the flame, except for the bottom where the flame should appear to be coming from.
Once this has dried, a mix of 4 parts Golden Yellow to 1 part Skull white is painted within the Golden Yellow. As before, leave some golden yellow showing so that the flame appears to intensify and become brighter. Once this has dried, carefully apply a further layer consisting of a mix of 2 parts Golden Yellow to 1 part Skull white.
Now depending on how intense you want your flames to appear, you could leave it at that or do up to 3 more layers of progressively brighter mixes. Going from a 1 part Golden Yellow to a 1 part Skull White to a 2 parts skull white to 1 part Golden Yellow to eventually 3 parts Skull White to 1 part Golden Yellow. These last few layers should be focused around where the flame is emanating from, The last mix in particular should be a single thin line, highlighting the bottom of the flame.
If you’re feeling up to it, while applying the various layers, if you wet your brush a little, you can use it to tease out the various layers between each other to achieve a much smoother blend from one colour to the next. This I tend to save for models that will get the most attention as doing it for the whole army can be a bit nerve racking.
And that’s it. it’s a bit long but I find it produces some very pleasing results and the method can also work great for lava flows and swapping the orange and yellow for shades of blue or green can produce some eerie supernatural looking flames too!
Hopefully this Tutorial hasn’t confused you , its my first and I’m hoping it is one that can serve you well! Enough ramblings from me, methinks.
Till next time!
- Beau
