437- A second quirky project

here comes a medium length entry with 968 words.

In late may, I posted my first quirky project, following Willowing's video. Via comments, she said she'd love to see a butterfly by me.


The inspiration was this photo I took back in 2008 of "Chapman's blue" which is one of my best butterfly photos, ever.

My initial thought was something I decided to work on for a second project, but for the current one, I imagined a sort of evolved butterfly, who can eat with utensils.

I came up with a first draft on 31st of May, consisting of the butterfly and a 2d table surface. 

I then set this entire project aside, whilst letting it simmer in my mind for further inspiration. I returned to it only a week later, on the 7th of June, adding my draft sketches for the utensils, various attempts at tongues and glasses, as I thought of possibly having my butterfly hold a glass of nectar to his mouth, an idea I abandoned, realizing that my skills aren't enough for this, just yet.

I drew the main scene of the butterfly, table in more 3d, adding only 2 out of the 3 initial utensils - deciding that I didn't need a spoon after all, and very basic berries. I did all this also on the 7th of June, and took another break. I felt I needed more content for the top third of the page, but lacked inspiration as to what I wanted there.

6 more days passed, simmering my inspiration, a bit of research, more draft sketching, showing here my attempt to work with a variation of an Art Nouveau piece, 'Butterflies on waterlilies' by Peter Behrens, retaining only 2 f the leaves that I included in my table cloth, as I found myself struggling to draw the waterlilies to my wished standards, nor even as a quirky, humanoid version with a face and arms. (for comparison, the original as seen in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts)

I fine-dotted my decided content for the top:  an affirmation for accepting one's uniqueness, in an arch.

All these drafts lead to this final sketch, which, just like the Water Lilies drafts above, have been further edited in Gimp to show the lines better, especially for the lettering of my phrase, as the dots were so fine, the scanner couldn't see them! The result is an exacerbated lining for the main butterfly piece. 

And then, I started  (at last!) the painting work, until the finalized piece on the 14th, after 2 weeks of broken, interrupted, difficult inspiration and draft works!

This piece's tools :

A4 watercolor paper,

mechanical pencil, IC aqua-color (watercolor pencils) for the outlines, Stabilo 12 point 88 fine liners to fill some gaps, mostly, but also a few outlines,

Caran d'Ache Neocolor II watersoluble watercolors for everything,
Posca pen and Signo white ball-pen for the hair, eyes and highlights.


Content :

A quirky, evolved butterfly, licking his lips in prospect of eating delicious berries, set on a table,  with a tablecloth (a bit of laziness to decide where his other arms/legs would be... they're under the cloth).

I chose to also have invented berries, though their inspiration is evident.

He has a few white hairs and lashes, but black eyebrows, small lines, white dots, multiple bright colors, with the main concept of orange body and yellow wings.

The scan doesn't fully show but he has 2 sets of eyes, 2 on the face and 2 on the antennas - I decided his evolution brought to triangular eyes.


 After I goofed the watercolors on the phrase, I deliberately didn't fix all the bleeding out of lines, as a form of accepting one's flaws, and I used the LGBT colors for it. Here, the lesson is that I choose retrace with the fine liners before fully erasing the dotted letters, as I didn't manage to redo the J properly and didn't keep my size relatively equal, thus ending the last word a bit farther than I had initially sketched, and almost lacked the space for it!

I let my momentary inspiration decide on colors organically, whilst referring to the color wheel that my wife had made for me years ago, as I wished to avoid 'browning' and thus, worked first on the smaller items, having learned from the previous projects, to help reduce color bleeding where I don't want it.

I enjoyed the overall process, learned a few new things on how's and what to avoid, and quite proud of the dimension I gave to the table, its cloth, and the utensils on top of it, especially the plate.

I can see room for improvement, but have done better than I imagined, though I was aiming for an unrealistic and quirky look! This is also why my butterfly looks close enough to real ones but his wings are inspired from several species and thus, I have my own invented appearance, rooted in reality, with a touch of fantasy.

I'll set my other butterfly project aside, and work on something different as a palate cleanser, but you can expect at least one more if not several projects to be posted.. perhaps weekly or so as this has been my current speed in producing art of some kind.

The therapeutic portion includes learning to patiently build my concepts, taking 2 weeks from initial inspiration to final result, something I severely struggled with before this project, and further expansion in skills after my previous 2 paintings, learning to extrapolate details and fine tune some borders to further reduce both color bleeding and white empty spaces. 

I had to learn to let go of some control by not planing my colors ahead, and to accept some apparent flaws as mentioned above, in the final element of this piece, with accidents to letters and color bleeding out of the lines.