inspiration: in January 2015, I saw the movie Flight of the Butterflies. In one of my more manic moments, I conceived of a fundraiser for monarchs and MS that would involve artists drawing/painting monarch butterflies, selling the art and sending the proceeds either to the MS Society or to an organization dedicated saving monarchs. I created a webpage describing my ambition and sent some email to the MS Society. I got no response. I made a few butterfly drawings, but the balance had gone from my bungee,
At the end of November 2017, I got an email from Henlee Phillips on behalf of her son Elliott. Elliott is a member of his school’s bug club. He found the webpage and Henlee helped him send email suggesting I add a link to this Butterflies In Your Playground page. There was great temptation to beat myself up about having given up on the project or having not taken down the webpage… Instead, I forgive myself (with wild abandon), updated the old webpage and made some promises I intend to keep about rethinking the project.
As a start, I chose a butterfly photograph and began to draw.
Creation: Monarchs are pretty complicated to draw, but I am fairly happy with these two. I am less happy with the flower. The petals go down where they should go up. I forgot all about drawing wireframes.
Insights:
- next time remind me of the wireframe idea
- a bigger drawing would make it easier to capture monarch detail
2024 update: Maria and her mom, Michelle, suggested I add a link to this guide to creating butterfly gardens: Thank you!