Living Color

SWALLOWTAIL, August 2011, 2' x 3'

Surprise!
Not everything in life should be black and white, cut and dried.

So, I splashed some colors over one of my drawings. The result is one of my first watercolor paintings.

Welcome to my house!

The butterfly visited a friend's garden, and she caught it on her camera.
For more of her work, on Facebook, check out  https://www.facebook.com/StorytellerPhotographyImagesbyRebecca
Storyteller Photography is a photography studio in Kinsman, Ohio, owned and operated by Rebecca S. Nieminen Sloan, an artist, author, teacher and award-winning journalist.  She strives to create beautiful and unique images that capture the essence of her subject and spark the creative imagination.

This one's a a perfect picture: The colors on the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly are perfect, and the flower had just bloomed. The butterfly is a female -- you can tell because of the blue. The plant greens are vibrant with summer light.

 I thought it would make a beautiful painting, and I thought on it for three weeks before getting started.

 

It's not perfect. In fact, it's amateurish. And, I went over the butterfly wings with a pencil to bring out details that I couldn't capture with a brush. But it is pretty. and I am happy with it.

The background of greens, blues, browns and blacks (and a little orange and yellow) is supposed to depict the other flowers and foliage behind the pink flower and the yellow-purple butterfly. It has a translucent quality, which was unintentional.

It was a challenge mixing up all of those color variants in a Dixie Cup.  Actually, I used several cups. The paint set was a cheap Crayola kiddie box, with black, red, orange, yellow, green, purple, blue, brown and black. That's it.

Drawing in black, white and gray comes easier to me than working in a color field. It's a slow process, waiting for that paint to dry, and then layering on more and more. I will surely try it again, but not for awhile. Perhaps I'll wait to see what fall's colors reveal. Or, maybe I'll wait 'til next summer and see then what blooms.

https://www.facebook.com/StorytellerPhotographyImagesbyRebecca/info

 "Swallowtail"
A watercolor by Tom Wills, 3' x 4'
From a photograph by Rebecca S. Nieminen Sloan
This piece is for sale
To inquire on this, or other original art: hankbonesman@embarqmail.com or willstom01@gmail.com