I’ve wanted to paint this for well over a decade, but I needed time to discover the right approach. Over the past year, I began wondering — what would the Hollywood Sign look like as a giant neon? There was precedent — at the turn of the millennium, the sign was ablaze in color — minus the tubes. So, with this as a general guide… I began to reinvent… on a large scale.

https://www.facebook.com/borbay/videos/1308392182577764/

Check the full video… or read on, for a step-by-step analysis of the process.

All paintings begin with a simple drawing, an orange sky, and a dream.

Red. Orange. Light beams imagined on the horizon. Time to get gradient.

Nailing down the sky, lighter by the treeline… shadows added to the hills, neon tubes drawn and painted yellow-white.

A deep green gradation in the foothills… almost time to dance.

Can you taste the rainbow?

The beams take a long time to paint with a size zero brush… so I alternated with the trees for maximum efficiency. When you have three kids, time management is paramount.

All beamed and locked… ready to dig into the letters… make them glow.

Beginning on the ends… H and D done first.

So close to making them all glow… just the Y and W remain. Also, for a point of reference — the Four Winds painting is 4’X4′.

Making the hills glow with reflected neon light… many subtle marks created, again, with a very small brush.

Down to the wire… I like to show the painting at many angles, because, frankly, it’s exceedingly difficult to capture what a painting feels like in one image.

And here it is, the Hollywood Sign Neon painting… invented and created in Idaho.

Bonus? Instead of tossing my palette paint in the trash, I created this palette painting as a complement to the piece. It allows me to be creatively free while banging away on so many tight details.

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