Mixed-Up Snake Art –
Fear of snakes is a common phobia, but there’s nothing to fear from these paintings. The purple python, blue boa and striped cornsnake are all friends of mine. (Did you know that only 25% of snakes are poisonous?)
These paintings are all mixed media paintings, meaning they use more than one type of drawing or painting medium mixed together. Ink, charcoal, oil pastel, chalk pastel, acrylic and watercolor make up these seriously sneaky snake paintings.
Grab a print or canvas of these snake paintings in the shop over here.
The colors are a bit imaginary, but you never know, they could discover the blue boa species deep in the jungle. Maybe a friendly colourful snake will help you feel more at ease around these reptiles.
SNAKING THE FIRST STEP
I started each painting with an ink background, in order to better judge how the colours would look against a dark back as I painted. Watercolour was next, for some of the colour and patterns on the snakes. I also used chalk pastel at this point for details and smudging colour into the paint. The oil pastel, lightly applied on top of the Python and Cornsnake, created a nice ridged scale-like quality with a slight shine.
Here you can see some before + after shots of the snakes in-progress. Like most paintings, they never look that great to begin with, and you have to keep plowing away until they start to get the look you’re going for.