Time to shine a light on my secret

From the beginning of the fish challenge, well..technically before the challenge...I had an idea.  The creation of uv invisible blacklight paint has intrigued me.  I saw some amazing work from an artist named Tang Dong Bai who works in airbrush and has moved to Pontiac, Illinois.

The paint is almost invisible in regular daylight...in fact several colors are completely invisible...until you turn on a blacklight. In the following picture, these dresses are totally white under regular light.

As soon as I saw them, I thought it would be amazing to include them in some way into signs.  The paint isn't really usable outdoors yet, but eventually!  In the meantime how could I use them on a sample?  I thought about how amazing those deep sea fish look...and then remembered a steampunk sign I'd seen of Jamie Oxenham's.  The challenge formulated in my mind immediately.  The paint would be my ace in the hole.

Unfortunately, the blacklight LED strip will not arrive until late August.  I decided that it was time to share the plan...it has been too hard to hold it in.

Once the strip arrives, I'll add it to the 'tank'.  Goodness, I'll have trouble counting how many LEDs will be in this sample!  It'll be lit two ways..one for regular viewing, and one for in the dark of the tank.

The paints arrived just a couple days ago. They are called "Wildfire" blacklight UV paint..and are actually a spin-off of Modern Masters.

They are pretty cool.  They look a little like elmer's glue until they dry....then they are barely visible.
Some are totally invisible.   The work is going to be playing with them in paint. You can mix them with water based acrylics and get totally different colors.

In the following photo, the tail and eye haven't quite dried..so you can see some white. I decided to paint on the "back side" that is not as visible as the other side. It's a test, and I can always uv clear over it and try again....

But what does it look like under blacklight?

I clearly need some experience painting with the colors..but this is going to be fun.  Not just fun for this fish challenge, but pure fun. Stay tuned!