The colour scheme used on my Chaos Space Marine plasma weapons. Adapted from Xenus Minis tutorial.

Basecoat

1. Start with Mephiston Red , ensure the area is well covered with as thin a coat as possible. This is important - there's lots of thin layers later.

Building up the glow

Each of the below steps are quite watery - this is to pool colour into the recesses of the coil as well as over the coils where hottest. Each step requires that you build an oval shape closer and close to the base of the plasma gun.

1. Evil Sunz Scarlet - a large oval shape from the base to almost the top of the coil. Also around edges of the coils at the sides and top. I also paint between all the coils, leaving the Mephiston Red on the coils themselves
2. Evil Sunz Scarlet : Fire Dragon Bright mix, about 75:25. Same as above, but less of an oval. Only recess the hottest parts (eg: mid-top of the coils).
3. Fire Dragon Bright : Evil Sunz Scarlet mix, about 75:25. Again, reduce size of oval and only a little on the recesses of the coil at the top.
4. Fire Dragon Bright , smaller oval
5. Fire Dragon Bright : Yriel Yellow mix, 50:50, very small oval
6. Yriel Yellow as a thick line along the bottom of the coils
7. White Scar as a thin line along the bottom of the coils.

OSL

I'm no master at this bit, but here's how I do it. Glazes are thinned paints, wiping off most the wet paint to leave just a small amount of very translucent paint on the brush.

1. Using a mix of Mephiston Red : Lahmian Medium , glaze a line around all edges of the metal around the coil, and on any protruding edges that would show the light
2. Same again, but with a thin glaze of Evil Sunz Scarlet . This is like a thin highlight.
3. Finish with Fire Dragon Bright 'dot' glazes. Again, this is thinned with Lahmian Medium , applied to the closest parts to the heat/most reflective parts.