Just a brainfart I wanted to share. I noticed a lot of people paint flames \"upsidedown\", meaning that the darkest (usually red) color is at the bottom, and the lighter yellows are the highlights on top of the fire.
So what people actually do is to paint fire in the \'traditional\' shading and highlighting methods, which for me, do not work.
The trick to painting fire is to make it look as if it\'s emanating light instead of receiving it, so (assuming you want to paint a realistic looking flame) just painting it red and highlighting it with yellow on the top doesn\'t cut it.
Think about fire. It\'s hottest where it burns the most fuel, at the base of the flame. This is where fire is the brightest. As energy is expelled from the flame, the particles cool down as they rise up, thus losing their fiery light.
One technique you could use is to paint the whole flame yellow, wash it with a red/orange ink once, and blend upwards into a dark red (almost black) color. Touch up the base of the flame with some yellow mixed with a little white in case some intensity is lost there.
Now I\'m not the final authority on how to paint things, and it\'s of course entirely up to you how you want to rock your stuff, but I just feel that only some painters really know how to make flames look like they\'re hot, and most do not.
Try doing an image search on Google for flames or fire and see for yourself.
So what people actually do is to paint fire in the \'traditional\' shading and highlighting methods, which for me, do not work.
The trick to painting fire is to make it look as if it\'s emanating light instead of receiving it, so (assuming you want to paint a realistic looking flame) just painting it red and highlighting it with yellow on the top doesn\'t cut it.
Think about fire. It\'s hottest where it burns the most fuel, at the base of the flame. This is where fire is the brightest. As energy is expelled from the flame, the particles cool down as they rise up, thus losing their fiery light.
One technique you could use is to paint the whole flame yellow, wash it with a red/orange ink once, and blend upwards into a dark red (almost black) color. Touch up the base of the flame with some yellow mixed with a little white in case some intensity is lost there.
Now I\'m not the final authority on how to paint things, and it\'s of course entirely up to you how you want to rock your stuff, but I just feel that only some painters really know how to make flames look like they\'re hot, and most do not.
Try doing an image search on Google for flames or fire and see for yourself.
