How to make lava bases for miniatures?

Welcome to this Green Stuff World's easy-level tutorial, where we will teach you how to create and paint lava Warhammer bases from scratch with a practical and detailed approach, for those looking to improve their miniature figure painting skills. 

Lava bases are very useful for figures that fit in fire, lava, and similar environments; as is the case with Khorne armies from Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer Old World, and Warhammer 40k; such as salamander space marines, some Chaos Lords, as well as any vampire from an undead army. 

In the Warhammer world, lava bases 40k are recurrent in the Blades of Khorne, composed of demons, monsters, and mortals. Specifically, it is an alliance between demons and mortals whose greatest craving is enemy blood on the battlefield. Each of the deaths achieved are offerings to the god they obey, Khorne, who uses the skulls of their enemies to raise his throne, so that every day is higher and higher. In return, god provides them with resilience and strength, so that the army can continue its mission.

Like the rest of the Chaos gods, one of Khorne's objectives is to dominate the mortals before the rest of the gods achieve it, which is why they are in constant struggle. When he succeeds, he will transform The Mortal Realms, into a huge battlefield where the only important thing is to kill as many people as possible. 

Part of his army is made up of humans (Blood Hounds) belonging to warrior tribes or men seeking to protect their home. Regardless of their intentions, once Khorne intervenes, their destiny is to live to gather skulls. Warhammer lava bases are ideal for any Khome-related battle scenario, as they match the red of their body armor and demons' bodies, as well as the destruction they wreak. 

Before crafting this lava base, make sure you have all the necessary materials. We use green putty to create the textured base and then cut it with our round cutters, size 32 mm. To give it texture quickly and easily, we print the pattern of one of our textured textured rolling pins for clay, Frozen design, on top of the putty. After painting, it will look like a real volcanic rock cracked by the lava heat. 

*Tip: If you want to prevent the green putty from sticking to your tools, such as the roller, your fingers, or other tools, always remember to apply a little sculptor vaseline on the putty before applying the texture.

The base shape is ready, so all that remains is to paint the base. We will apply a white acrylic priming. We will use our synthetic brushes to apply the primer, and Kolinsky brushes to paint the details. To get a realistic effect for the lava base, we will use several acrylic paints, overlapping layers but leaving some edges visible. In this order, the different shades are applied in the holes left by the roller: Hellfire Red acrylic paint, Flaming Orange acrylic paint, Cyber Yellow acrylic paint. Finally, the Black Stallion from our maxx formula paint range is perfect for volcanic rocks, which will be blackened with a charred appearance. 

This incredible lava base design has been created and painted by artist Dragonsland, a featured Green Stuff World contributor. Keep discovering the secrets behind acrylic paint and learn how to apply them to your project in our blog, where we teach you how to master the most used techniques and achieve amazing results.