"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!

Great Green Frames and Ink Jet Papers coming your way.

I've been saying over and over that THIS will be the weekend that I finish my Tulip Poplar Flower paintings. One is very close to being done, the other two just need some more coats of paint on the flowers and then I need to work on the middles (the stamens? I'm not completely knowledgeable in floral anatomy). I was telling my husband how excited I would be if I could find reclaimed-wood frames for them, or something else eco-friendly... AND what a bonus it would be if I could find frames made from poplar trees!

Today was my lucky day because through Twitter, I found a GREAT search engine called The Eco Key. It's a Google powered search engine that puts an eco filter on your search results! Especially when adding the words "eco-friendly" or "green" to my search, I was getting much better results than using a the standard search engine (with no eco-filter).

So, through The Eco Key's engine, I found my frames on Etsy.com.
Behold BucksCountyFrames shop! They have lots of standard sizes and offer custom, too!!

Photo copyright from The Bucks County Frame Company:
The frames I purchased.

If you're interested in eco-friendly frames, there are quite a few people on Etsy who make them, and some do custom sizes, etc. I did searches for "ecofriendly frame" (click to see the results of search), and "reclaimed wood frame" (click to see search results).


While I was playing around with the new search engine, I decided to look online for some good recycled and/or eco-friendly paper options to use with my new printer. I've got some Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Matte paper (I hear over and over that Epson printers are really designed to work best with their own papers) that I've used for some 8x10's and ACEOs and so far I really like it. But I'd prefer to find a more eco-friendly paper option- but only if it's going to make my prints look their best, and not ruin my printer.

I searched with The Eco Key again and found The Green Rooster which is Hahnemühle's eco-friendly paper line. They've got 2 bamboo papers and one made from sugar cane. 5% of the proceeds from the Green Rooster label papers are donated to environmental protection projects. After reading about the 3 different papers, I decided to order some made from sugar cane (here's some info about sugar cane paper and here's some cool stuff too) as it's a natural by-product and got some great reviews online.

It was a little tough choosing a paper though because you always have to wonder, which is best? Which is the most green? What happens to sugar cane by-products that aren't made into paper? If they would otherwise go to waste, then it's great to have found a use for them in a nice art paper. I also know that generally speaking, sugar cane farms have some bad effects on the environment too, though (as does almost all agriculture, sadly). But what about Bamboo... that would be a whole separate blog post, as bamboo seems eco-friendly but when you start really researching what goes on with it, at least to produce fabrics and things, it might not be so great after all.

That doesn't mean I love Bamboo (as a plant) any less.

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.