Excitement is mounting! 

Fox News buzzed this morning with this public art project.  Facebook makes mention of the broadcast and has a few photos of other snakes, too!

Hats off to my pals Diane and Ted who provided the info.

Next post will be photographs from the unveiling reception.

Click here for SCSDC updates.

Photo below: Fox 8 Kicking with Kenny Live today.

 I'm getting down to the wire! 

In the last two days, I added two coats of orange metallic varnish over the flames on the snake's body, and a third coat of high gloss sealer overall.

The orange paint took on a yummy patina in the process.

After completing the yellow/peach/orange sequence I decided it needed a bit of red/burnt sienna so deepened the intensity of the coloration by adding just a bit to the base of each flame.  You may be able to see that I'd completed the job just about halfway up the snake's neck before daylight began to fade — and the cat woke up.

I began at the tail primarily to keep out of my own way on the overlap, working on small sections at a time.  The pointed portion of each flame was masked to keep the edges sharp.  Outer edges were done freehand. Tips received a coat of opaque yellow first.  The center of each scale  is a peachy, flesh color which was dragged into the yellow;  the broadest part of the scales are painted a deep orange. I labored over the course of a four days until the head and face were complete. 

As you may have noticed, even Bob the studio cat has begun to watch the process from his perch in front of the window.

Next step was a transparent yellow glaze on the white area remaining.  It was important to maintain the guide lines I penciled in at the beginning so I'd know where to place the orange scales. 

Here it is with the blue-to-black edges cleaned up, and a base coat on the eyes. In the last two photos of the tail the final blue overcoat has been added, which gave the matte finish a metallic, high-gloss luster.

All the blue stripes are complete. Here I've re-masked the blue/black edge to make it easier to tidy up the edges...

...like this.

I used a roll and a half of masking tape during the course of this project. I love the nice clean lines.

The remaining blue work is repetitive: it's simply one block following another at this point.  I'm hopeful that in the next two days I'll have finished with the blue acrylics: I'm eager to add metallic touches. 

A couple of days have passed.  From this pic you can see that I'm masking each block to keep the lines clear and sharp and exercising care by allowing 24 hours drying time before I mask and paint the remaining alternate white areas; otherwise the painters tape might lift the fresh paint.

This side of the neck is shaded.  Note the intensity of color... 

...and that the hue perfectly matches the painters tape.
(If I'd used green tape it would have been  easier to line up along an already painted line. Ain't hindsight grand?)

Perfect uniformity is not something I labor over.  Variance humanizes art. However, there is a happy medium between rigidity and chaos.  If something jumps out and my eye returns to it over and over again, I make adjustments until the feature disappears into the whole.   At the end of the day I stand back and look for just such glaring differences. There are a few on this side of the neck which will need touching up.

Moving along. 

I'll be adding highlights to the facial areas later.