In this wargaming base painting guide we'll use some messy techniques to create a fiery look on our Rocky bases. We've used a 28mm sized base and a molten lava colour scheme beneath obsidian-black rocks.

We'll be doing some drybrushing and some messy wet blending, no fine brush control required. We're aiming to recreate the hellish surface of Mustafar from Star Wars or the red-hot Realm of Aqshy from Age of Sigmar, and the textures of our Rocky range really helps sell the idea of molten rock bubbling away just beneath the crust.

You will need:

• A stiff-bristled brush for drybrushing
• A medium-sized brush for wet blending

Colours we used:

• A white undercoat (we used cheap car primer)
• Fiery colours (we used Citadel Flash Gitz Yellow, Citadel Trollslayer Orange, and Citadel Evil Sunz Scarlet)
• Black rock colours (we used Citadel Abaddon Black, Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey, and Citadel Dawnstone)

We'll be painting our colours from lightest to darkest, so the hottest areas are almost pure white. Figure out where you want your heat to come from, often the middle of the base or round the edges of the rocks to look like they've broken up the crust and revealing the heat underneath.

Grab your yellow and slap it down in those hot areas. Don't worry about being messy or leaving it to dry, we'll be doing all the hot areas in one go. It's also fine to let the paint run up the sides of the rocks, as it'll make these easier to paint later.

Now the yellow is on, we'll add the next warmer colour directly over the top. In this case, Trollslayer Orange. Applying it over the wet yellow layer means we can blend the colours together where they meet. Don't worry about being neat and tidy - a lot of this will get covered up in the drybrushing stage

As with the last step, but this time we're adding Evil Sunz Scarlet. Just tickle around the edges, blending it in to the orange layer, while still leaving the orange and yellow layers to shine through.

Lightly drybrush some Abaddon Black onto the most extreme edges furthest from the heat source. This will create the illusion of darker, cooler rock forming a crust above the molten rock beneath it.

Paint the larger rocks with a layer of Abaddon Black, making sure not to go too far down the sides. If you were messy enough in the previous steps, there should be some yellow and orange up the sides of your rocks already that you don't want to paint over - this will help sell the glow effect coming from underneath the big rocks!

Grab your grey colours and tickle the tops of the rocks with them. We used a light drybrush of Mechanicus Standard followed by a lighter drybrush of Dawnstone on the most extreme edges of the rocks.

The final step (and our personal favourite) is to finish the base by painting the rim. We favour two thin coats of a dark colour that complements the overall base colour scheme, usually black, dark grey, or dark brown. Here we've used Citadel Abaddon Black to contrast the molten core in the centre, and to help blend into the dark crust around the edge of the base.

Some people don't do this step, but we believe that painting the rim of the base is like framing your favourite poster or wall hanging - it fully finishes off the look by tidying, containing, and presenting the artwork you've invested in.

And you're finished!

What do you think? Would you like to see it in different colours, or on different sized bases? Let us know in the comments below or through our social accounts.

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Pick up your own Rocky bases here to start your own fiery project!