What Day Is It?

 I don't know how retired guys keep track of the days. Throw in a holiday or two, a weekend and a snow event on a day I should have had off and I'm lost. I asked my phone and the voice on the other end says its Wednesday.  I'm thinking by next Monday I'll be back on track...unless it snows over the weekend and I have to go out plowing.
 I took another shot at laying out some flames on my practice tank. I felt things were starting out ok...

 If you remember I said I wanted to keep the pattern a bit more open and leave more of the base black paint exposed through the flames. I know the above pic looks goofy but that base layer gets buried quick so it seems I don't have to be very detailed in a pattern. Or at least thats what I'm trying here.

 The red candy and orange candy layers are on at this point and while I hate the way it looks, I like a couple of things I did like trying to weave patterns and colors in and out of each other. I was also able to create highlights by not saturating the candy layer. I left a little base layer show through in spots and thats the lighter look around some of the edges. That concluded what I wanted to see in this practice session and the next practice session went on right over the top.

 I like traditional hot rod flames and have this idea that if I start at the flame tip end of the tank and just keep weaving and overlapping flames, working towards the front of the tank, they don't really need a starting point. Two things learned...I need more stencils despite having cut four more just for this attempt and that stencils get wet and can transfer paint to the project when flipped. That seems like a no brainer but once you get rolling those things can be forgotten.

 I also tried painting individual flames in multiple candy colors but that didn't work well. Probably because I didn't seal each color with clear before moving to the next. I don't know what the hell I'm doing so I'm gonna try that one again.

 What I found out from last week was that combining real fire and hot rod flames yields questionable results. At some point I need to decide what style I'm after. Real fire, hot rod style or just some mishmash like in the above pic.

Later.