Giving life to the rattler

The next step in my snake painting was to render the markings of the snake.  These markings are visual clues to trick our mind into thinking that this is indeed a snake that we are looking at.  If the markings are done correctly and are distinct enough, perhaps we can even identify the species of the snake.  The grid that I sketched in before assisted me to write in the array of scales in their proper orientations and gave my painting a degree of realism. 

Before applying color to the sketched snake, I needed to establish the light values.  I was taught this while learning how to do landscape in Chinese brush and it served me well over the years.  Light values help to define the medial and lateral sides of the snake, to borrow from medical terminology.  These values also help to locate the light source, thus giving a three dimensional interpretation visually.  The values were applied using a light wash, and then rubbing with the semi-dried belly of the brush to help with the texture. 

I could now color the body of the snake.  Tea was my favorite color to use for this purpose.  Mixing it with vermillion gave me the right hue and the opacity from a little mineral green helped to give off the subtle feel of snake skin.  I also dolled up my snake using little dabs of metallic gold acrylic color.  Camouflaging is the art of survival in nature, but for my painting I needed to snake to parade itself a bit more. The paper itself had built in gold specks in it,  so the additional gold did not seem to distract. 

My project being a Chinese New Year's painting needed the mandatory red color.  There is no better representation of that than a piece of red paper for people to write something auspicious down, as commonly practiced in China and Hong Kong.

So I painted in my piece of red paper.

I placed that piece of red paper under the snake to suggest that the snake deemed it a favorable and safe place to dwell.  I wanted to accentuate the fact that the snake was laying on top of the paper by casting a shadow.  To help me determine the location of such shadow, a fashioned my prop snake using the packing material that I had intended to stamp the snake with and shone a light on it.

Now that I had my shadow painted in, and it did seem to lift the snake off the paper, I needed to write something auspicious on that piece of red paper.

I chose to write in the Chinese word for Bliss.  That word is very popular with such usage, especially for New Year's wishes.

I wrote the word Bliss using the same metallic gold acrylic paint that I dressed the snake with.  I chose to write it in the walking style font rather than the more formal block print font.  I liked the fact that the more cursive style calligraphy fit in better with my coiled snake.