"In The Waiting Line" Operation Fill-A-Frame #6

http://www.etsy.com/listing/67892531/in-the-waiting-line-2-swallowtail-study

Operation Fill-A-Frame #6 is complete! This one is very similar to #5 and thus has the same title (with a 2 at the end). "In The Waiting Line 2" is another butterfly and caterpillar study, this time featuring the Tiger Swallowtail, also known as the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.

Just like the Monarch "In The Waiting Line 1", the mat of this picture is outside of the glass, not under it. (It feels like a hard wood or plastic and is painted.) The two drawings are on a single sheet of Canson Recycled Bristol art paper, and the drawing was created with ink and my Forest Choice colored pencils.

This was another quick one, and thus, is a cheap one! $25 for this framed original drawing in my Etsy shop- you can see the listing here :)
http://www.etsy.com/listing/67892531/in-the-waiting-line-2-swallowtail-study

Man, oh man, did I learn a LOT while researching this piece.

First of all, let's talk about this caterpillar.
Years and years ago I painted a swallowtail caterpillar- does this guy look familiar?

He is, indeed, a swallowtail caterpillar. When I took the original photo of him and looked him up, that's what I learned. It made sense because the year I found him, our yard was covered in yellow tiger swallowtail butterflies.
BUT
It turns out, he's NOT the caterpillar of the tiger swallowtail. Nope. (It's very easy to get confused because if you do a Google image search for Tiger Swallowtail Caterpillar, just "swallowtail caterpillar" is included in the search and pictures of those guys come up!)

He is the caterpillar of the Black Swallowtail butterfly, seen here:

Photo by Derek Ramsey (Ram-Man)

So if those caterpillars weren't from the tiger swallowtail, then where did all those butterflies come from? And why were they staying??

Answer- because their host plant is (....drumroll....) the Tulip Tree! Well, that is one of their host plants (this should look familiar, too!) Our house was surrounded on all sides by Liriodendrons (I also learned the Tulip Tree has a bunch of different names!)  :)

http://www.samanthasartstudio.com/tuliptree2.html

And their caterpillars look way, way, way different than the guy above that I painted! What's very interesting is the variation in the caterpillars themselves. I was looking all over the web for clarification of the different caterpillars and didn't understand why so many different looking ones were all tagged as the tiger swallowtail.

Some are bright neon green. Some are brown. Some are multicolored. This is due to the different instars of the caterpillar. Each time the caterpillar sheds its skin, it looks slightly different. This happens to a lot of caterpillars, but this one seems quite dramatic to me.

Imagine my world being turned upside down upon finding out this whole time I've been telling people this caterpillar grows into the wrong butterfly!  (Sorry!)

AND
Imagine my confusion when I found out that all male tiger swallowtail butterflies are yellow and black, but only some of the females are yellow and black. The rest are just plain black! (There is also a rare morph of the two.)
See great pictures and the explanation here:
http://www.rlephoto.com/swallowtails/swallowtail_ET01.html
Eventually I'll learn the differences.... but in my confusion and endless searching for which butterfly was which, I found out there are Black Swallowtails, Black Tiger Swallowtails, Spicebush Swallowtails, and Pipevine Swallowtails
and
they
ALL
look
almost
exactly
THE SAME!

...Eeep!

Rise up this mornin, Smiled at the risin sun, Three little paintings...

Well, in reality, there is NO sun to speak of today as it's completely overcast and disgusting outside. But the bright and filtered light coming in through the windows actually makes for perfect lighting conditions for painting, so paint, I did.

I've got the backgrounds on all 3 of them done, and the leaves on the top two are finished as well- they may need a little bit of tweaking and cleaning up. The leaves on the bottom piece need a few more coats.

These are 3 small canvases, 8"x10" each, and are studies I did from the three tulip tree photos I posted here. My original intent was just to do one big painting with focus on the flower, but before I tackled that, I thought studies might be a fun way to play with the colors and really get a feel for how I want the final big piece to look.

I added a lot more blue than in the reference photo to the top left painting, since the sky blue against bright green leaves is such a pleasing combination (thanks, Nature) and with an orangey-yellow flower in the middle, this color combo might be my favorite.

I saturated the browns a little more in the background of the bottom piece, as that photo was taken pointing directly into the woods, and I thought such dark colors might make the lightness of the flower pop more. The flower- the focal point of the painting- has a lot of orange in it, and I wanted to see how it looked to use a color in the same color family (time to get out your color wheels), rather than the complimentary color (blue), in the background.

In the top right painting, I used both the blues and the forest browns (and greens) to give the viewer a look at both sky and woods, which is what one would see when looking at low-hanging tree branches. The greens mixed in with the background are also a good indication of the time of year you can find these fabulous blooms- the end of spring, when the leaves on all of the trees have finally fully released themselves from their tiny little buds and everything is lush and vibrant, and the hazy intense heat of late summer is still months away.

I'm still not sure which background I'll go with for the final piece, as each has benefits. The blue background gives the piece a summery and almost tropical feel, and how could that ever be a bad thing!? But the view of the flower with the deep woods and sky in the background gives such an accurate representation of the environment in which these trees grow.

PS-
Don't forget about Earth Hour tonight!
Are you ready?
(I have no idea how people "get ready" to switch off electronics, but maybe there are some who have to have massive preparations in place to play Amish for an hour?)
but over on twitter everyone's "getting ready" so.... I better go make sure I'm ready, I guess.

Flowers in the Concrete

I've been a busy bee!

In this picture, you can see how I've completely taken over and trashed the dining area of the apartment. (This is what happens when you don't have an actual art studio!!) But the good thing about having everything in the main area of the house is that it does force me to see it every single day, and also makes me want to hurry up and finish so I can clean up the mess :)

(But I'm actually hoping to keep this momentum going and not give myself enough of a break to clean up. We'll see how that goes...)


I'm working on the 2nd grape painting, but I'm not a fan of repetition so it's already boring me. Don't get me wrong, I think when it's done it will be nice, and I look forward to having a series. But my mind is already racing with ideas for new paintings, which doesn't help at all with the repetition.

So to alleviate some of this boredom/repetition, I've also started small paintings of the tulip poplar flowers. I had those three photos (see previous blog entry), and I like each of them- so I thought I'd do some small studies before tackling a larger size painting, which I eventually intend to do. Plus I have no small paintings, and I want to get into the habit of working smaller than 16"x20" on occasion because smaller pieces take so much less time to complete. The great thing about working on 3 at a time like this is that I can work on a section of one, put it down, work on a section of the others, and so on. By the time I've worked on all 3 of them, the first is already dry and ready for more.

THIS MEANS HOURS AND HOURS OF NON-STOP PAINTING.

I feel like I'm back in college!!!


Here is the progress so far. They're still a hideous mess for the most part, but I've printed out my reference photos and put a layer or two of paint on some of the leaves, and about 3 or 4 coats of paint on the backgrounds of these. I can see in the daylight today that the backgrounds still need more work.

Oh, You Pretty Things!

I've wanted to paint a Tulip Poplar blossom for a long, looonnnng time now- as long as I can remember. Unfortunately about three years ago when it occurred to me to go take some reference photos, it was about a month after the flowers had come and gone. They don't last long at all, which makes the blooms even more special.

The following year (2007) I promised myself that I would absolutely NOT miss bloom-time, and thus kept a very watchful eye on a carefully selected Tulip tree (with low-hanging and easily accessible branches) in my dad's yard that entire spring.... waiting for the flowers. Exactly when they bloom depends on the harshness of winter, the warmth / intensity of Spring, rainfall, and of course a host of negative man-made influences which is pretty much a given with anything in nature now... but I digress.


I was able to capture these photos in mid-May, and the blooms- as usual- didn't last more than a few days, a week at most. I photographed them daily in various stages of bloom (okay, call it what it is: TREE SEX). You can easily see the differences in lighting/weather/time of day in these 3 pictures I have posted, and these are my favorites of the set. I'm looking at these 3 pictures as inspiration for a new painting. Or three.






Surprisingly, I actually have never seen this flower painted, although I'm sure somebody has had to feel the same inspiration as me and captured its glory with some form of artistic media.