"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!

"In The Waiting Line" Operation Fill-A-Frame #5

http://www.etsy.com/listing/67648352/in-the-waiting-line-monarch-study

Operation Fill-A-Frame #5 is complete! This was one of the frames I was looking forward to filling the most. "In The Waiting Line" features a big (4th instar) Monarch Caterpillar, crawling and munching his way among the Milkweeds, awaiting the time to turn into a chrysalis and become a beautiful Monarch butterfly!

The title seemed appropriate for a caterpillar and was also the name of a song I listened to while creating the art- listen here:



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. I hadn't done a colored pencil drawing with ink in a long time- maybe not since my 30 bugs in 30 days project! I yearned to do something a little realistic, a little cartoony, and so this was created.

This was a 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/67648352/in-the-waiting-line-monarch-study

I have another frame identical to this one and will probably do another caterpillar/butterfly combo drawing. I'm thinking an eastern Yellow Tiger Swallowtail butterflies for the next one!

Caterpillars Finally Finished!

Yay! My little Monarch Caterpillar Triptych is finally finished!! I just have to spray them with sealer, but right now my porch is too sunny to do so.
I must wait. 

What's fun about these little guys is that there are a variety of ways to hang them... I originally designed them to be in a vertical configuration, but my husband suggested trying them horizontally and I found they worked that way too.

Or they could be hung separately- the two smaller ones on one wall, the long one on another wall.... however you like!

Horizontal with edges lined up...

 Horizontal & centered...

Vertical.

I kept these guys way, way, WAAYY less detailed than my usual work. I was going for something fun and illustrative rather than realistic. I did try to keep the caterpillars themselves pretty realistic looking though, and because of that I didn't want the plant life around them to distract from them. I also found Milkweed is a pretty challenging flower to paint- there are just so many tiny flowers all clustered together. But after I had two layers of paint on these flowers, I decided I was satisfied with them. If I had put too much detail into them, I think the leaves and stems would have looked unfinished.

I'll be bringing them to the Ned Smith Nature & Arts Festival in a couple weeks. Come check em out in person! :)

Art in honor of NATIONAL POLLINATOR WEEK! and a story.

 

 This one is done! Except not signed yet in this photo.

I've been working on my caterpillar triptych a lot the last couple of days and managed to finish this one about an hour ago!

Last night I worked on the little flower buds while watching "The Wedding Singer." I hadn't seen that movie in YEARS and it's such a good one! I was so thrilled to find it on (and they even showed it twice in a row)!

The paintings are also a great distraction from obsessing over house hunting / endless thoughts of decor and my imagination running wild / realizing that packing suuhhh-hucks and I need to just go buy a bunch of packing tape already and stop putting it off (but I hate to leave paintings halfway done for weeks/months on end..........)


 Um...  I guess from that paragraph you can tell how scatterbrained I am at the moment.

So scatterbrained this whole week, in fact, that I missed an allergy-shot appointment on Wednesday so I had to reschedule. They fit me in this morning at 9, and of course I was running late (I was trying to finish up the black on the caterpillar!). I wasn't speeding or going crazy because of running late, just feeling frazzled.

I accidentally went through a left-turn-yield-on-green light, following the car in front of me, not paying as much attention as I should have been- I totally admit. I guess one plus side is it wasn't like I just ran through it in the middle of the green-light cycle, that would probably have been worse. But then again had no one been in front of me, I would probably have paid a lot more attention to what was going on in the intersection. Since I ran through it when it must have *just*changed, the cars across from me hadn't started moving yet. But wouldn't you know it, right in front was a cop who saw me and honked at me and then pulled me over.

I was so embarrassed.

I never do things like that. I HATE when people run red lights, hell, I am all for red-light photo enforcement. I'm sure since I followed the person in front of me, it looked like I was saying "SCREW YOOOUUU!" to the folks across whose light had just changed to green.

So the cop asks me if I know what I did. I responded with "I thought I still had a green arrow.... but I guess I didn't."

"NOOOOO!... you DIDN'T and you almost took off the front of my car!"

Ok... that was an exaggeration because if I had looked up when he honked and seen his car thisclose to me, I may have literally peed in my pants. Instead I looked up and my first reaction was annoyance... not panic.

I get that what I did looked like a dick move, but both cops were standing there by my car and kind of making wise-cracks the whole time. They were really laying in to me, and I deserved it, I know, but it seemed like it was getting to be a bit much. I was on the verge of tears, and stuff like that doesn't make me cry. Why were they treating me like this??

It dawned on me later that maybe... it was because of.... my car. (Is that like pulling the race card? I don't know.)

They saw the obnoxious fluorescent color, tinted windows, and I'm sure assumed I was just some young punk who habitually drives like an @$$hole. All I needed was a big loud muffler. I am pretty sure that they saw the car and formed an opinion instantly and jumped at the chance to rip apart one of those drivers.

I don't blame them. I would love to do the same.

But I still wasn't a fan of feeling judged. Maybe they would have treated me the same if I had been driving a station wagon or minivan. I have my doubts.

Ned Smith Center Nature and Arts Festival!

I am very excited that I've been invited to exhibit (and sell, of course, hehe) my art at the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art 17th Annual Nature and Arts Festival in Millersburg, PA! (Only about 40 minutes from Harrisburg!)

None other than the Mothman himself wandered into my booth at the Patriot News Artsfest a couple of weekends ago and overheard me talking to a friend about the caterpillar painting I'm currently working on. Naturally hearing "caterpillars" his ears perked up, and when he introduced himself as someone whose life has been amongst moths MY ears perked up.

I was so excited to ask him all about moths, and he was so excited to tell me all about the Nature and Arts festival. It's just a one day show on July 31st, but it sounded like a lot of fun and is very close to where I live.

Since we've started the house-hunting process, there is a chance that that weekend could be pretty busy or hectic, depending on when we find a house and when our move will take place. Since it's just one day, and hopefully my husband and I do a better job than last time of getting all our sh#t packed up on time, I could probably free myself up that day regardless.

I'm pretty excited about the show and have a swarm of ideas buzzing around in my head of some drawings (and paintings) I might like to try and get done in time for this show specifically... we'll see. I've spent a couple hours today on the caterpillar paintings and hope I'll be able to get the leaves all finished, and then I can start the milkweed flowers and finally finish up with the stars of the painting.... the caterpillars themselves!!

Adaptive Caterpillar-tych

Jessi's 'Pillar Pic... "Peekaboo!"

My best friend since elementary school recently posted a couple of pics on Facebook of some monarch caterpillars. As you may have guessed.... I kind of have a thing for caterpillars- especially after spending so much time with them last summer at the Hershey Gardens butterfly house. Soooooo I've been wanting to paint some more 'pillars for a while now. After I saw this picture last week, I couldn't get it out of my head and the deal was sealed. It's been so long since I did anything art-y...

I HAD TO START SKETCHING.

After about 6 renditions, here's what I came up with:


I thought it would be best to keep the painting small as I don't have a TON of time to do anything too big and involved. PLUS I have a new technique that I want to try and really don't want to go experimenting with a big ol' expensive canvas!

I've had these two really nice 6"x8" canvases for a while that have just been sitting in a closet on a shelf where I see them ALL the time, but never had any ideas for them. They were given to me as gifts and 6"x8" isn't an "off the shelf" easy-to-find-frame-size, so I knew I'd have to paint something on them that wouldn't need a frame. Since I have two of them, I figured I would keep the two odd-sized canvases together and always assumed I'd use them for some kind of diptych. That seemed perfect for this project AND I love the idea of eventually doing a bunch of caterpillar paintings so why not do..... A CATERPILLAR DIPTYCH!

Cause we all know TWO are better than one! :)

I began working on ideas for the 2nd composition and made sure to arrange it so that the plants between on the two canvases didn't connect perfectly, but it would be enough to show they are meant to go together. Thus it can be hung vertically or side-by-side, and it won't matter which is on the right or left.


So... the new technique I mentioned.
Here you can see something I started last summer in my "30 Bugs in 30 Days" series, when I decided the background didn't have to be 100% photo-realistic ALL THE TIME, and for the first time I played around with bright colors and more imaginative effects.

There's a 2nd part of the new technique that I'm going to play around with on this one, too...


The leaves that are painted green here are probably pretty much done. Usually I'd blend them more into the background in a fuzzy way, the way a camera lens might if this was a photo. This time I'm going for something more illustrative- not necessarily catroony, but definitely not realistic either. I want to see what happens if I do some layers throughout the painting and these leaves are the furthest away, so they'll be close in color to the background and have no detail on them (but keep the sharp edges). I'll do some light coats of the background-yellow over them to blend them in a little more. As I work toward the foreground, I'll add more and more detail. I'm hoping to paint the caterpillar and leaves with as much detail as possible to really put the focus onto them. We'll see how it goes.

~ * ~ * ~

I've recently discovered that I'm not a hoarder after all. Like most artists, I have a decent stash of blank canvases put away just waiting for a creative moment. A lot were given to me as gifts; some I got when a local store went out of business and had canvases on sale, so I picked up unusual shapes that are harder to find at the big box art/craft stores.

When I pulled the little 6"x8" canvases down off the shelf, at first I thought I had 3 of them as there were 3 canvases all stashed together and from the side they were all the same size. I immediately considered doing a triptych, but found the 3rd canvas was actually 6"x12" (which is a pretty fun size to work with) so I put it away to save for another day.

I kept thinking about that canvas being 6" wide, the same as these, just sitting there up on that shelf. Today became "another day" when I decided it would make a perfect and really interesting long, skinny triptych with these caterpillars. When I showed my husband my idea, he arranged the canvases in yet ANOTHER cool and interesting way (cause he's an engineer and that's what they do) which made me even more excited about the project, since my slight hesitation was that if someone fell in love with all 3 canvases, would they be just happen to have the right long skinny wall to hang all 3 of them on???

Check it out:

I love this idea because I can paint them subtly enough to "go together," but no matter how they end up being hung they'll still have a nice flow between them. Of course, each of these can work as a stand-alone painting and I'll especially keep that in mind for the long one in the center. Then they can be placed in different spots throughout a room- or if all 3 don't end up being purchased together (sad!!), it won't look lonely :)

It's Bug Week!!

Since I recently did a post about some ways to have a green Christmas, and suggested shopping for handmade items (with the website Etsy being a great place to start)... This week I've decided to showcase some of my favorite shops on Etsy that feature...
Bugs!!

The first shop I'm featuring is...
"Mutant Caterpillar!"
http://www.mutantcaterpillar.etsy.com

The caterpillars are SUPER cute, and are all sewn by hand!

This photograph makes me smile sooooo much!

You can check out the artist's other website here, where most of her projects can be seen:
www.lisamillerstudio.com
And her blog here:
http://mutantcaterpillar.com/

Be sure to click the links above, or go here, and check out her shop to find yourself a brand new fuzzy friend!
http://www.mutantcaterpillar.etsy.com

Enjoy! :)

Little Bug Boxes!

I'll keep this short and sweet since I'm recovering from a cold and want to take advantage of a grey, cloudy day, some cold medicine, and a snuggly kitty for some napping.

I've been thinking it would be fun to create some art that is not only bright and colorful and fun but also functional....
Behold the tiny Bug Box!

So far it's only got one clear coat on the top of it- I'm going to apply more and sand them down for a smooth finish. This is the first experimental piece- the guinea pig, er caterpillar, if you will. I've got a couple of different sized boxes to play around with techniques and designs. I think the combination I've got here of decoupage and hand-painting works well, but some of the boxes may be all hand painted. However, to put a significant amount of detail into them, I'd have to spend a fairly large chunk of time though- which would make them get expensive quickly. This is why I like the idea of decoupaging my existing art onto a piece and then hand painting some simple colorful touches too.

We'll see where it goes, but I soon hope to have some of these in my Etsy shop!

If you've got ideas that you'd like to see on a Bug Box, let me know! Just leave a comment- I'd love to hear!

Caterpillars in the Garden!

I can't believe it's already mid summer!
Where is 2009 going!?

Upon my return from Alaska, I see all the gardens and landscapes in the area are in full bloom! It makes me miss gardening a little bit.

Particularly I miss all the bugs. Part of why I loved gardening so much was seeing the many butterflies, moths, caterpillars, bees, beetles, millipedes, potato bugs....
(At least I am volunteering some time at the Hershey Butterfly House this summer so I will get my fix!)

This bug here is a Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillar that I painted a few years ago. The original painting is 20" wide by 16" tall. Looking at the painting of him always makes me happy because it's so bright and SO much larger than life!
The original painting is currently framed and hanging (for sale) at Gallerie 13 in Mechanicsburg, PA. I've also got prints of him available in my Etsy shop.

Here is one of the reference shots I snapped in my garden which inspired him:


He's chomping on some dill that's going to seed. Dill is one of the host plants for Swallowtail butterflies- meaning that it's a plant they want to lay their eggs on because the caterpillars eat dill. When the eggs hatch there is an instant food supply ready and available! Apparently these guys also REALLY like parsely, so if you want butterflies in your garden but you also enjoy raising parsley, I suggest you plant a lot of extra to share with these guys! :)

Inchworm, Inchworm... Bug #22

Saturday's bug:

A sweet little inchworm!

Click to see him in my Etsy Shop!

I played around again with a colorful sky, rather than just a blue one. It's so much fun! I was afraid it would come out looking... well, weird, when I did a purple background for the butterfly, but I liked it so much I did it again. Another trend in the series is taking place! :)

If you're in a creative rut, I highly recommend taking on a little daily creativity project for yourself. I love that I have to come up with the concept and execution start to finish each day. I might have an idea ahead of time, but usually don't begin sketching until the day I'm creating that bug. Just in this series I can tell I've grown so much and learned a lot from experimenting and trying new things!

I think it's a great exercise for any artist! :)

So... Any suggestions for the last few bugs? I can't believe I'm almost done! I'm kind of sad, but also looking forward to what other projects I may take on after completing these bugs! I might turn a couple into larger paintings, or maybe even tote bags or other fabric projects. Who knows?

Update:
I am SO flattered! My little inchworm here was featured on ACEOshowcase.com!
http://aceoshowcase.com/inchworm/259