I am working on my chaos dwarf/abyssal dwarf army for kingsofwar.. for the diorama bases I decided to go with a “dark dwarf ruins” vibe & lava rivers inbetween to add glow effect to the miniatures.. I have built armies with glow effect before but lava works differently.. anyone got ADVICE for videos describing “reverse zenithal” ? (meaning that you start with the dark colors? Any advice welcome!
Pictures of the still “unairbrushed” bases for attention 
I’m afraid I cannot help you much since I have no experience with airbrushing. However, I must ask: where are these pieces from? They look great!
to me, here the mega master is @Skink
this is the kind of work he does
yo @Skink ! your subject is on!
You’ve come to the right place!
There are a few tutorials on lava bases in the forum, like the one by Reaver or Lan Studios.
The bases? Thanks! The dwarfen columns are 3d-prints, the rest is made from cork, glue, sand & hot glue
They look great! My main problem is that I want to give the miniatures next to the lava streams a glow - & normally I go from lightest to darkest color.. I think with lava it has to be the opposite direction though?
You mean paint from lightest to darkest, or end up with the raised areas being darkest?
I’ve not seen anyone starting with dark go to light, as normally you need a pure white base and a warm yellow (very important to be a warm yellow). Then paint up to very dark red or black
And that’s easier painting light to dark
Welcome btw.
Not really a full description but typically over black you need the basecolor the areas that will have lava back to white, so that additional layers of red/orange/yellow have the appropriate brightness on top. If looking for professional advice, Id watch some elministura content (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLNwkLh6qpHPIp4y2pxGPMw)
But to give you an example I did by hand with no airbrush on my Hellcannon:
I would say, I think uneven ground levels looks better. I understand for warmachines it’s easier to have a flat ground level, but less realistic
IRL It appears to depend on the volume of lava and the underlying terrain: more craggy ground forms with sloped or thick flows.
Below the ground is mostly flat, though at people scale you’d have large steps and uneven plains, for sure
Ok then I’ll stick to my normal routine as I planned initially (white, yellow, orange - last red) - I talked to a friend of mine & got nervous probably.. it can be quite exhausting painting a 2k pts army & then risking to destroy it by airbrushing over the painted minis haha thanks for the advice!
I imagine what a lot of people do is assemble the bases for an entire unit or army at once, then cut and glue down the models ontop.
So you don’t airbrush around your models
Yes - its not for oldworld but for kingsofwar & it will be dioramabases - so the main goal is that the units themselves get the glow from the lava - furthermore the spots of the base behind the units stay free from the glow but it expands inbetween the models.. only option is to glue them down first though
Well, the goal here (in my opinion) is not to try and make lava look 100% realistic, otherwise everything looks like a blob of oranges and black. You can either go from dark red to pure white (like my bases posted bu @Loidrial or Reaver’s tutorial) or do the opposite, like this Centaur from Bloody Beasts shows:
https://bloodybeast.com/blog/2014/05/09/chaos-dwarf-bull-centaur-taurruk/
Couple of tips:
1 ) do add a final touch of pure white or yellow mixed with white. It might look off at the beginning but really makes the lava look “hot” and vibrant.
2 ) do not go overboard with reflections on nearby rocks/objects. As a rule of thumb: OSL on rocks = not much, OSL on reflecting surfaces on models = looks ace
3 ) a touch of realism isn’t bad. As in: lava is really hot. A K’daai emerging from it looks awesome, a wooden Bolt Thrower standing on it looks meh. Think about flows as well: are you making a lava flow? In this case add rocks in it, being dragged along. Are you making tiny fissures in the ground through which lava is visible? Lan Studios’ bases do that.
