Squid paint job

Well, what with one thing and another time to post over these last two weeks has been a bit rare and consequently I'm now on a catch up series of posts.

Over the last two weeks I have been painting the squid, amending the body and tentacle alignment after the building work. In my last few posts I was preparing for the squid job... now I had just to slap the paint on!

My paints, mixing pots, ref photos and other paraphernalia

I am using Dulux Weathershield Diamond emulsion with a satin finish. I have  a blue which I have matched to the original background colour (it has been painted over several times with paler, less intense blues) This blue is more intense and makes the deep red colour 'sing out' giving the squid more dramatic impact. And I have a deep maroon type red for the squid body.

The first thing I did was to start painting in the blue background, making the corrections to the tentacles and body alignment as I went. I concentrated first on getting the wall with the head and tentacles as far as the tank and screen to the right. As it was quite warm in Bug World the paint dried fairly quickly which meant that once Ihad done the blue I could go back and where it was dry paint in the red of the tentacles. The colour I had chosen for the squid was a close match, but was a little too red and in some places it did not cover the underlying paint. So I planned to add some blue to it to darken and dull the hue... but this would come a little later. You can see in the photo the colour difference from where I have freshly painted the body and the head is the old colour.

I was aware that I had just a day or two before my 'week' was up and I wanted to get it looking basically joined up and presentable for the Thursday through to the Monday as it was school half term break and going to be busy; so it would be nice if it looked half decent for the visitors.

Across the room in a large cold water tank is Lola. A recent change in her lighting (reversing day and night) meant her tank was dark, lit with an eerie blue light, but she was more active during our day as she thought it was night. Lola is an impressive beastie and several times as I waited for paint to dry I went across to look at her.