The Visitor

How was your weekend friend?  Is it getting cold where you live?  My closet is slowly filling up with sweaters and leggings and mittens.  I do love this time of year!

I have been making plenty of plans for new winter paintings, but while those sketches are brewing it's been nice to work on something familiar in between all the custom work.  Butterflies!  My mother-in-law saw this gorgeous swallowtail in her yard this past summer and was quick enough to photograph it in time to capture its wings both clasped shut and wide open.  The underside of the hind wings are a gorgeous blue and orange and black and white pattern.  I had the pictures propped up against my easel, beckoning me, for the longest time.  Suddenly last week I just picked up a canvas and started painting!  So far I am loving the dark and light contrast and repetitive pattern.  I think I'll call it The Visitor.  This is the first layer.

Just thought I'd share!  Hope your week is off and running.

Monarch Migration

Monarch, 12x12"
Watercolor and collage on paper, mounted

This time of year always makes me think of these migratory insects.  Have you been seeing them around?  If you live near me in Central Illinois (or anywhere along the 40 degree latitude mark), right now is the peak monarch "season" as they have already begun their journey to Mexico.  You'll be seeing them flying through your area in great colonies, stopping only briefly for rest and food.  A few of them have come through my yard, pausing to feed on the nectar of my sweet late bloomers.

It's quite impressive isn't it?  To think what these little insects go through as they beat their tiny wings all across the vast United States.  Can you imagine the sights they see?  The places they land?  The trees changing colors as the cooler wind currents sweep them along. The challenges they face in making the journey the first time.  The sense of duty they have in repeating their ancestor's journey.  The pull they must feel- the allure of the south.  The relief of reaching that warm and sunny destination, huddling together with millions of others who have made the same journey.  Can you imagine the stories they hold and share between them in silence?

That's why I paint them.  I love their colors and beauty and stories.  I love what they represent and how faithful they are to the journey, knowing that if they choose to stay and not go, they are choosing death.

Isn't that inspiring?

Painting available here.

butterflies butterflies!

Purple Spotted Swallowtail Butterfly 20x20"
Original watercolor on paper, mounted

Graphium weiskei (Purple Spotted Swallowtail) are among my new favorite swallowtail butterflies.  Look at those beautiful wings and the stark black swooping tails!  This particular butterfly resides primarily in Papua New Guinea and Australia zones and has several brothers and sisters with slight color variations (see below).  The undersides are just as pretty, don't you think?  They are mirrow copies of the upsides, except in brown.

via

In my search for references I stumbled upon an amazing Etsy seller who sells the real thing!  I've been wanting to start a little collection of my own and am leaning toward the sage and crimson (big surprise there)...

Which one is your favorite??

Painting: Step 2

After the initial drawing and first thin wash of color,

I begin to add the darker values and brighter colors.

I use Arches 90 lb hot press watercolor paper and mount it on Art Board.

If I don't first mount the paper, I have to stretch it while I paint in order to keep it from getting wrinkled.

Mounting is much easier!

work in progress

As the wind moves the leaves in Autumn, so it begins to graze the wings of the Monarchs, whispering a secret song so enticing that their wings intch to fly, to move, to be carried with the winds to a distant land where the sun rarely hides and the trees keep their leaves and all the orange-winged bugs gather. But what is left behind to weather the storms of snow and cold as it encases the land and covers the leaves on the ground until a new Spring? Sadness may linger in the wind, but it is taken, too, to a warmer place inside her chest, to be stored until a new Spring brings them back.