40k - Painting a Lava Axe!

Although I have a LOT of 40k Review posts to do, I really need to paint tonight.

So here is something that I have finished (on the blade).

A Lava Axe!

I looked at a few videos on YouTube. All of them only really show lava swords an Astartes would carry.

So I then watched some videos about artists painting lava on paper/canvas/digital. Because the surface area of the axe is bigger than a sword and its not just narrow.

But basically you paint the whole blade white.
Then bright/light yellow, whole blade.
Then you go for darker yellow to orange ans make an irregular pattern.

Some artists stipple with a hard, short hair brush. This is what I used.
Others glaze and blend.
One guy even uses a contrast paint wet method. But I didn't like it.

So irregular light orange for a large area.
Then dark orange, smaller area.
Then deep dark red, smaller still.
Then black. These are the clumps of cooled lava.

In a blade you just do black stipple on the edges.
For this massive axe I needed to look at lava flow pictures and art and did those irregular squares.

You then go back with white and create thin lines of lava flow and then glaze over again with yellow.

I then went back and forth and darkened and lightened sections as I go.

The key is to remain irregular. Apparently it's really easy to get into a rhythm of color per 2mm type thing. Luckily the axe shape prevented me from doing this. It's more relevant on a straight blade.

• All images are mine and taken by me!

Thank you for reading!

Tag List:
@aussieninja, @new.things, @alonicus, @dungeondog, @xenowolfza, @riesakashiya, @tomster-17, @exptrader, @borsengelaber, @jacobtothe, @fredfettmeister, @mirroredspork, @kheldar1982, @surrealis, @oblivioncubed, @owen-turner

*PS, Should you wish to be removed or added to the taglist, please let me know!Cheers!
@zakludick

Hive South Africa