Hobby Cheating 67 - How to Make Lava Bases 

Thank you Vince! Just what i needed! And on top of that you helped me improve my airbrush precision 🙂 Super clear tutorial as always 😉🙏

Very cool effect. Something I've seen done, which can produce some amazing results, is to add a final layer of Tamiya Clear Orange over the lava once everything has been sealed; depending on what type of look you're going for, this can really sell it. On a semi-related note, I'm glad you mentioned about the Cold Grey; when I got my bottle I thought to myself "It looks rather warm, brown-grey" and wondered if I'd gotten a bad bottle. Also, loved the mid-subject rant about people painting black directly over yellow; I was chuckling the entire time.

Hey Vince, great video as always. Planning to refer to it for my upcoming S2D project... Just a question: it is not clear to me why you covered everything in White Stone and then Pumice and Gloss gel respectively the stone and lava: could White Stone just be skipped and the other two products applied to the cork directly? Or is it to give a certain structure before applying the texture? Thanks!

Sorry to post on such an old video. This video is fantastic and is exactly the effect I'm after so I'm going to give it a try! Just one question- when applying the gel medium, do you place that over basing paste or just build it up over the regular base?

Is this a project you could recommend attempting without at airbrush? I've got two armigers to paint and Im not sure that I could justify the cost of an airbrush for just two.

Back at this Khorne Army for NashCon, so is there a cracked earth paint you’d recommend. Thanks for the tips!!!

6:00 Do you still enjoy using game air (or any air paint I guess) as much as you did in the past? Have been re-watching your old video's and noticed that you used a lot back in the day.

Who knew the detective from Hill Street Blues knew how to paint lava bases?...lol

This is a great base. I don't own an airbrush atm, but those techniques will be dandy in the future when I do!

The change of into music is a nice touch. Also, did you get a new microphone? Your voice has better fidelity & amplitude.

Could u brush on the understanding if u don't have an airbrush?

If I Google images of lava the surface is really flat (because of it's' viscosity assume). What you made here looks more how water in a fast flowing river would act.

17:56 "Why are you going to paint yellow over black?" 99% of the time, I'd agree. That said, I'm trying to get back into playing Tyranids. Many of the paint schemes require having a normally transparent hue brush painted over a very dark color (often black) for doing things like the marks on the edges of their carapace plates (the tips or outer rims, not literal edge highlights). Some are even more exotic, like having multicolored dots within dots (usually with analagous hues). See CatgutPainting's Coconut Crab Tyranids to get an idea of what I'm talking about. While these do look cool, every tutorial I have ever seen with these NEVER zenithals when they make them. The downside of this is, as cool as the patterns are, it never looks like the light is interacting with them properly because you need a thicker paint in order to cover over the darker color (hence why these paints are never thinned). An even harder problem exists if you were to attempt to zenithal something like a Hive Fleet Behemoth scheme. While you may not have the odd pattern to deal with, you now have to worry about how to zenithal something that is warm in one part (the red), and cool in the other (the bluish turquoise color). This wouldn't be so bad if the chitin armor was only on the back and head, but with the leg armor, you can't just use one color to highlight the top and another color to shade from below. In summary, I guess this is really a two parter. A)How do you use a zenithal undercoat on a single surface where there are patterns that feature an abrupt change in hue and B)How do you zenithal undercoat a color scheme that features both warm and cool colors on surfaces at different heights on the model? I'm not even sure this is possible in order to preserve the original undercoat. I'm thinking you'd just have to use the zenithal as a guide, take a photo of it, base coat the areas in the colors they need to be, and then go over the areas with glazes/shades to lighten/darken the areas to where they should be in more of a traditional Citadel "how to" way of basing/highlighting/shading as the zenithal would be covered over and not preserved in the final piece. The reason I say this is because you have a similar problem when trying to paint things like pants for Harlequinns. Generally, I've seen great painters (Kujo for instance) who normally zenithal their models do something similar to that for Harlequinns.Granted, he doesn't zenithal the Harlequinn, he basecoats it in flat colors and does a bit of wet blending before layering and glazing. In the end though, the pants look like they've been lit correctly, and they have a ridicoulous combination of abrupt hue and value changes (between different colored diamonds) as well as more gradual changes (the yellow diamonds becoming more orange in parts as well as lighter or darker depending on how much light they receive).That said, I haven't been doing this for years/decades. Thoughts on how to make Tyranids look right (maybe a Hobby Cheating video in the works *wink wink*)?

Is there a particular mini color palette that looks best on lava bases like this?

Im using your method for a diorama with phoenix and elementals for a summer comp where the theme is hot and summery. I have lava flows and a lava river . My biggest problem will be moving around the diorama to airbrush as i cant move the actual base around while im painting as its too big. Ive nearly finished the prep as per your method and its almost time to start airbrushing. Everything looking good sofar so thank you for this excellent post and wish me luck

Great stuff friend 👏 👍

This is working really well on my Mantic Phoenix and lava diorama wouldn’t like to be doing this without an airbrush though

brilliant effect will be using this method in future. Thank you.

Just wanted to stop by WAY too late, and say I used this strat for my ghouls (25 mm bases). I love how they worked out, I reckon this is an amazing plan for any lava base, regardless of size.

Hello vince, I was wondering if you have came across ways to recreate cooled "Pahoehoe Lava". I'd imagine it involves painstaking greenstuff or some sort of texture paint. Any ideas?

I actually use a Vallejo pumice which is black in colour and works well on cork and saves painting in black designators!

Those vallejho texture paints, how well do they stick to plastic bases? Also do you need to prime over them in order to paint the texture paint/gels? Awsome tutorial!

Looks very good! Is their a difference if you use Vallejo Model Air for this? For example exchange Sun Yellow for Yellow (MA002)? I don't quite get what is the difference between vallejo air and model color. Thank you!

Looks great and some nice tips thank you. Would love to see some slime/acid vids soon 👍

pretty cool! Worked for me doing it with brushes. Thanks very much!

2:10 great stuff for making water and ice affects. I have used it to make icicles using plastic packing material as a base.

A great tutorial, this lava looks hot and liquid, only a question, you don't apply gloss varnish over the lava to reinforce the glowing effect? Oops, another question, have you tested the gloss gel medium to do snow effects?

I am going to use this video to do a lava base. Only i get to try it with a brush! Eeek

I know this is a bit of an old video, but if you were to use lava bases for your army would you reverse your zenithal highlighting to hit the white from the bottom? Since the lava is probably casting stronger light than the alternative light source? On another note do you have a video on Zenithal highlighting red? is it brown/grey/white instead of black/grey/white? Thank you ahead of time if you see this comment.

Great job! 👍🏻 Subscribed

Very nice tutorial mate

Hi Vince! Would you suggest FW inks for the whites and orange? I'm thinking Flame Orange and the standard white.

that pop once it was in the photo booth!, the poor lighting for the majority of the video wasnt making this look amazing, but that final pic

I am actually loving that gel medium. I am thinking it could do molten metal effects quite easily with a TMM paint

Good stuff, thx!

"Volcanic rock is dark" Rhyolite: am I a joke to you?

Really useful tutorial. Many thanks.