Advice about painting a Lord of the Rings statue

[lordsidi]

http://imageshack.us/a/img397/2677/bdurafter7ky.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.usHi,I'm not sure if you folks can help,but I've owned this statue,made of porcelin according to the manufacturer,Danbury Mint of the Tower of Sauron"Barad Dur". It came prepainted when I bought it but hated how they did it,so I used a Dark Grey spray and recoated the entire piece,then went back and repainted the area where there is a Lava moat. I'm sorry I don't have pics of what I did,but I'm adding a few of the original statue. My question...is there certain paints I could buy that would make the lava seem to ,how shall I say it..."glow" with the effect of real lava? I've seen so many on here do miracles with paint jobs,so I thought if there was anyone who could advise me it would be someone on here.

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j176/ ... urIP22.jpg

[Rocketeer]

Just use yellows and oranges. Find a picture of real lava, squint at it a bit, and just copy the colors onto your model.

The squinting helps you bring your right brain into play; it's better at this sort of thing. The left brain, usually dominant, is symbol-oriented. It sees the lava, says "Okay, that's lava, it's red" and puts the subject aside. Your right brain can examine the picture and say, "Okay, the color is actually a very pale yellow-white just here, and an orangey-red here..." which is what you need. So squint.

[dizzyfugu]

There's dayglo paint available in artist shops, acryllic paint (water-based, AFAIK in orange and yellow - any red I know is rather magenta and not suitable for magma/lava) which comes in tubes.

These might work for some drama, but it's personal taste if you want to go THAT far. Might look pretty toylike. I'd suggest using pure and bright red, orange and yellow tones, working wet-in-wet from dark to light tones, and maybe apply a wash with black ink which emphasizes cracks.

Maybe do some experiment on a demo piece before you put hands on the real thing - and using a real life benchmark is never wrong, just to see how the tones are and where you can set highlights. You might also add some vapor/fumes with white absorbent cotton?

[Go Flight]

The glow is just more of the paint you used for the lava. Take a small flash light light and cast it upward to see where the light will fall and then just copy the area that was lit up with the correct color.

BTW, remember that the closer the item on fire is to the point the lighter the color. That's is such a pet peeve of mine seeing a fire (or the like) where at the source they paint it deep red, but at the tip of the fire (where it's coolest) they paint yellow/white. Sheesh.

[lordsidi]

thanks for your advice. I really appreciate it.