correct, that's how I'm building it. If you start at the inner track upper left corner and go CW you get 011010 which is why I thought that was a good place to start. If you start in the middle of the inner top (where the leaf is pointing) and go CCW, you get 011010 which I thought was good also, but I don't know how to look deeply into the resulting binary stream so I posted hoping there really is something there but I can't see it.

I dunno, maybe it's not bacon. That's why I wanted to see if I was missing something with that bitstream ie..converting to hex, converting to base58 (Not sure how to do this) converting to base 63 (because there's 63 squares on the board).

Well, if you do take the path I suggest, height(H) Outer color (O) Inner Color (I) and go around the aforementioned path HOIHOIHOIHOI etc..., then xor that result with the repeating ribbon 011010, then bacon that result, you end up with ONLY A's and B's (interesting result?) which if you Bacon that again, you get..... jibberjabber (maybe)

SMEKCXBE_RGUQY_GGAREQ_PS_ZUUFB

If you decide that starting on the inner track top where that one leaf is pointing to the inner color, you can go CCW and get 011010 as well. Starting at this position and going CCW matches the right hand spirals I think. Again, I've not seen anything obvious come out of this but it would be great if I missed something and someone else here can catch it.

I've got a theory I've been working on for a couple of days. It almost feels like a Eureka moment with no payoff *yet. I'm wondering if anyone else wants to help me see if I'm on the right track or if I'm close but got off somewhere. I really feel like I'm on to something here:

 it starts by looking at this "statement" with the ampersand: https://imgur.com/a/NfjBI

1) It appears that the statement is saying: "flames and leaves" but not the colored flames, the little white orange ones we've all been ignoring.

2) There are three leaves on/near the ampersand: pointing left, up and down

3) There are three leaves on the left side border pointing: left, up and down

4) There are orange flames touching these leaves. The one pointing left is touched by 1 orange/white flame. The one pointing up is touched by 2 orange/white flames. The one pointing down is being touched by 3 orange white flames

5) The one pointing left appears to me to be indicating flame height (tall). If it was pointing to an actual flame it would appear ambiguous (pointing at color or height?) as you'll see shortly. Also the leaf on the top border is also being touched by 1 orange white flame, it appears to be indicate flame height (short) and is not pointing at a colored flame.

6) The one pointing up and touched by 2 orange white flames appears to indicate outer flame color (yellow)

7) The leaf pointing down and touched by 3 orange white flames appears to indicate inner flame color.

So: it looks to me like it's saying 123 -> height, outer color, inner color

So where to start looking at this pattern? Take the Alphabet Canary path starting with the inner track at the upper left corner and go clockwise, then counter clockwise on the outer track. Using my own notation of outer corners as Captital and inner as lowercase as shown in the image abdcaACDBA

If you take that path and rotate what you are looking at each flame height(tall) outer color (yellow) inner color (green), then the binary string you get starts with 011010. Off to a good start! Since the alphabet_canary found pattern of short flame every six flames, you would always get a 0 for those flames. A fixed value followed by 5 binary values. That could be a hint to check the bacon cypher which would have been an obscure clue before coin_artist posted the poem link now it's a no brainer.

I'm not sure I did it right but when I checked the bacon cypher doing everything as described above taking 6 values (always with a zero up front) and making that a Bacon character i got jibberish. "?JAYWUZUZVY?FM?IQISN?VZ?D" to be exact. It did occur to me that there are 152 flames and if you do this type of thing (looking for three different properties on a rotational basis) you could extract all the data from the flames and end up with a 456 bit binary stream because 152%3 is 2. But I haven't gotten any results that seem promising but my eyes are untrained compared to some of those here.

Fair assessment. For those here from the beginning the 1follow me clue was the first  clue that  kicked off an ARG that led through a ton of individual puzzles which ended up with the 1flamen6 image. That image landed somewhere around page 15 of this thread. The original 1follow me clue is not expected to play any part in solving this image puzzle correct? It was the first puzzle. The 1flamen6 image is like the hundredth puzzle in the series. One should be able to solve it without any other element excepting the painting. The white rabbit was followed, he led people to this last step. I only recently came across this puzzle so I viewed it as a separate challenge.

Okay I did some homework. That specific clue was to a previous puzzle. Here is my proof that that clue (the white rabbit one) belongs to a previously solved puzzle and not this one. Hopefully this will put to rest the white rabbit nonsense (for a short time):

https://twitter.com/coin_artist/status/892872713152450560

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-EbSshf76PN407Srs3V4A5JWsAzmMmD7Oddrrfh9fwE/edit

It makes for good reading as it describes the path to solution for a previous puzzle. Intimidating if you ask me.

I've been working on treating it like a Mad Fold-in (based on the line "distance and no space was seen twixt the turtle and his queen") with no luck so far. I did find one element of possible interest which is a line of 26 degrees drawn from the center of the spiral (lower left) intersects the tips of three leaves and the stem of the little one in the middle. Also two leaf tips can be joined with a 26 degree line the one on the left hand side pointing up and the one on the top pointing to the short orange/purple flame. Not saying these are leads just documenting my thought process.

I've said before that there appears to be an obvious statement "flames and leaves" indicated by that ampersand "&" near the knight. I think there is more to get out of the flames for sure but I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on the leaves.

The "1Follow me" clue came hot on the heels of the original release of this puzzle over 2 years ago. It was a comment from a user, not (presumably) from the puzzle maker. Therefore there is nothing (substantive) linking that cryptic clue to this puzzle. It may have been a ploy to distract puzzlers and if that is the case it was successful since the first 30 pages of this thread or so were dedicated to tracking down that rabbit hole which still has nothing tying it to this puzzle. If you can show me how that comment is actually linked to this puzzle, I may reconsider. People who claim to see a white rabbit also insist that looking at the puzzle ANY OTHER WAY is an ERROR, and SUCH BLIND FOOLS while not providing any lead that suggests that viewing the puzzle this way gets you any further along than counting leaf directions or blue squares or any other thing. That arrogance suggests to me three possibilities.
1) They know something about the puzzle but are trying to confuse or mislead.
2) The are just trolling.
3) they are deluded.

If the white rabbit is really a lead, then what next? If you can't show that it leads anywhere, then why insist that it's correct and all other ways of looking at the puzzle are a waste of time?

I was calling the #6 flame "fat" and anything that has a teardrop shape in general. If it appears that paint was added to thicken up the outer flame and make the inner flame skinny, that's an argument for skinny (as in the first two short flames on the right). For anyone that's interested in persuing this channel, here's my list of flames:

My notation is capitol letters for the outer track, lowercase for inner track and corners labeled A(top left) B(top right) C(bottom left) and D(bottom right) skinny = 0, Fat = 1    astrisk mark follow hard to call flames

skinnyness channel:
AB - 00111000110110111
BD - 001011111111*      
DC- 0011111001010001    
CA - 10001100
ab - 01*00110000110001110101110001
bd - 110000111000110101110001
dc - 000011111100011001100010001101000
ca - 1*011001001101

Indeed! I've thought several times about the name 1flamen6 as meaning "one flame in six" (one out of six) or (one flame in six ways) a bit too on the nose for my taste if I was naming the puzzle but if it's correct there would be two more channels of binary info in the flames. We've seen height, outer color, inner color, and probably inner flame skinnyness.

Update on this one, there appears to be another channel of info we've been ignoring (or not talking about publicly on this forum). Props to smracer for noticing it. If you view the "skinny/fat" inner flame as another channel of data, then there is an *almost* 16 digit match between the outer bottom height and it's skinnyness. Flame # 9 counting r 2 l along the outer bottom doesn't match with this otherwise perfect match. The interpretation of the skinnyness is a bit more subjective than the others but once you've spent some time deciding between them it becomes easier to call. This track contains the weird solid red flame most have been ignoring. See for yourself and let me know what you think. Perhaps we could compare our skinny/fat calls and start using this new channel of data for playing around with... Not quite as solid a lead as alphabetcannary's discovery but I think it's significant.

There might be one more channel of data not picked up on yet. I'll let you know once I've poked around with it a bit.

Serious question for those new to crypto wallets (me)... How to I check a guess to the solution? How can I know if my private key resolves to the 1FLAMEN6 address? If it did, how would one use that key?

One more observation: I followed the spirals initially. Both the clockwise and CCW spirals leave out the inner right side. That is: there are 8 sections of flame and 7 are represented by the spirals. Leaving out the inner right side you have 128 flames. That number seemed significant but whatever.

Whoa! A lot has happened here in a week's time. I'm going to try to replicate the results so I can play around with the data myself and hopefully contribute to the progress.

Some things I noticed recently:
1) There is what appears to be an "and" statement with that ampersand. It looks to me like it is saying "Flames & Leaves" or possibly "flames & blue". But I cannot figure out a way to get data out of the leaves. Or at least I can't figure out a way to logically order the leaves. 10 point down 5 point up 2 point left 0 point right.

2) There are 0 leaves touching the bottom boarder, 1 touching the right boarder, 2 touching the top boarder and 3 touching the left boarder. That could be quatrinary encoding but the leaves would need an order for that to be meaningful. The small leaf at the base of the queen is the smallest and is the only one with a green stem making it a reasonable place to start or end but after that ?? I tried knights move but didn't get far and several leaves are off the board.

For those who have been going over the image with a fine toothed comb, just an observation: Download the High Resolution image and compare your findings with the lower resolution image. I had "found" upwards of 100 tiny numbers in the lower resolution image only to have them disappear in the larger rez version. I think a lot of these numbers/letters that really truly look obvious (once you've stared at it long enough) vanish at a higher resolution (which has it's own hidden numbers). So if you've found a hidden letter or number, compare between resolutions before getting too excited. Here's a "key" I found at a lower resolution that disappears in the higher one...  at least it looks a lot less intentional in the higher resolution version.

http://oi64.tinypic.com/5mg5y.jpg

To be honest, I can now see tons of small but non-microscopic numbers all over the image. I see larger ones too. here's an example in the D1 Square middle right of the board. I see mostly 2's and 3's and the 3's are all consistent style with the flat top. Do you see numbers too friend? Are you also mentally divergent?   

https://imgur.com/a/hJia3

I haven't seen anyone point out the ampersand "&" between the phoenix and blue knight, it's there. Suggests the "Phoenix &" solidifying the poem as a lead.

what is that feather looking feature under the melting queen? it doesn't look like it belongs with any of the other figures and I can't make out what it is supposed to be.