Painting 'Dark Fire'

Normally, when painting fire, I believe you'd have white at the centre and/or base of the flame, and then gradually move to darker colours on the top and edges.

However, I was wondering if it's possible to still get a fire effect using darker colours (and, in particular, no white)?

See, I've made a converted Mandrake 'sorcerer' for DE, but the flames seem a bit too light for his black body and general theme at the moment. So, I'm wondering if I can darken them without losing the fire effect altogether, if you see what I mean.

If this sort of thing is possible, can anyone offer me some advice/suggestions for going about it?

should look pretty effective if you just reverse it - think along the lines of a photo-negative. It would then look as if the darkness was actually coming from the mandrake itself, and as the power bled from it into the material realm, it becomes lighter.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

should look pretty effective if you just reverse it - think along the lines of a photo-negative. It would then look as if the darkness was actually coming from the mandrake itself, and as the power bled from it into the material realm, it becomes lighter.

That's a cool idea. I'll give it a go, thanks.

That does sound cool.
I want pics!

Well, this is what he looks like at the moment (prior to 'darkening'):











In isolation, I was quite pleased with how the fire/magic turned out. But, it just seems a bit bright - both in comparison to the model's skin, and with regard to their 'shadowy' flavour in general.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post the above for comparison purposes. I'll post more pictures when I finish repainting it.

Hm, dark fire? I think, it could work out, when starting with a dark grey in the middle and then go to a deep red.
From there, go to a normal red. That should do the effect of 'dark fire', I guess.
Not for your paint scheme, but you could do the same with blue colors.

Cool model!

Perhaps another consideration, if the nega-fire doesn't quite sell by itself, would be some source lighting - or in this case, shading?

Since we normally paint objects with darkness in the depths and light on the edges, I wonder if nega-fire might look a bit flat. But by shading those areas where the light would have fallen (if it were normal fire), culminating in heavy shadow next to the fire, you might be able to add to the impression that light is being drawn in and captured from the surroundings.

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I've just about finished pointing the dark fire/magic.

Since pics were requested earlier, here's the result:













I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

The one thing I haven't done yet is repaint the fire on his hand. Mainly because I quite like how it turned out, and am still debating whether I want to repaint it as well or leave it looking like more normal fire.

I like the contrast of it, myself.

I'd agree with Thor the existing contrast is very cool, in fact the entire conversion and paint job is really nicely executed.

Thor665 wrote:

I like the contrast of it, myself.

Ok, I'll leave it as it is then.

PartridgeKing wrote:

I'd agree with Thor the existing contrast is very cool, in fact the entire conversion and paint job is really nicely executed.

Thank you.

Yes. That's exactly it. You did the thing I was going to say to do.
Maybe a touch of deeeep purple?

thesaltedwound wrote:

Yes. That's exactly it. You did the thing I was going to say to do.
Maybe a touch of deeeep purple?

Where would you put said purple? If you see what I mean.