WARGAME COLOR SET. FIRE EFFECTS.

Four tones for painted fire

The set is built around a single task: to construct a flame from its darkest root to its lightest tongue. It contains scarlet red, medium orange, bright yellow and ice yellow. That very order is the instruction for use - the tones go one over another from the bottom layer up to the tip, and each successive one covers a smaller area than the one before it.

Where it comes in useful

Typical targets are gun muzzles, burning wrecks, torches, magical effects on fantasy figures and a glowing lava base. The same scale will also serve on heated metal: a freshly cast ingot, an engine exhaust pipe or smoldering debris will take on a convincing heat precisely through the transition from red to yellow.

How to work with the four

The best results come from dry blending and thin glazes applied over several rounds, not from one thick coat. The lighter tone always stays closer to the source of light, so on a figure it determines where the surroundings will be lit. A brush is more suitable than an airbrush, because the areas are small and the transitions are painted by hand.

The base decides

Warm tones have a weak covering power, so on a dark base they go out. It is worth laying a white or light gray patch under the root of the flame and building the color scale up on that; otherwise you will use three coats just to make the red visible at all.

What to avoid

Do not mix the shades in too large a quantity in advance - a dried leftover mix cannot be reproduced the next day, and the transition will then not match. And do not lay the lightest tone over the whole area of the flame; a fire that is yellow all over loses depth, and the four shades are wasted.