Today’s prompt is: insects.  Whether you choose an actual insect, which is defined as something that has six jointed legs, 3 body parts, a pair of antennae, compound eyes, and an exoskeleton, or something insect-like, it’s all good.  As always, it’s a guide and not a must have.

I chose butterflies… because I like them.  And happily, they fall into the insect category.  I’m two for two today!

Rather than draw a butterfly I took the simple road and cut out three from our Watercolor Butterflies IV collage sheet – the three leftmost ones that you see on the sheet on top.  Once I decided on those three, I more or less knew what the colors for the rest of the page would be.  I had the idea to use Gelatos for the background, over a gessoed surface, so the first thing I needed to do…

Was add a very rough layer on the page.

Then I chose colors that worked with the butterflies.  Note one Distress Crayon since I didn’t have a Gelato on dark blue.

I scribbled them on and spritzed water on top… too much water and made a mess when I moved the colors with my fingers.

Then wiped most of it off.

Then spritzed a Starburst Spray on top.  When it as dry I applied Chopped Pesto Dylusions Paint through our Pebbly Mask.

Then added the dots using Black Marble Dylusions Paint through our Punchinella Trio I Stencil using one of the Inkssentials Mini Ink Blending Tools.  Decided that was boring and the colors were too close to the ones in the butterflies for there to be enough contrast so…

I used the same Mini Ink Blending Tool with gesso to make big white dots.  It took a few coats to get good coverage, but I find gesso is better than paint for this type of thing.  It covers better (yeah, I know three coats – it would have taken more with paint) and for some reason tends not to pick up the colors underneath, staying more white than paint does.  That was better, but it wasn’t quite what I was trying for.

So I used the Chipped Sapphire Distress Crayon and drew around the white dots, then smudged it with my finger.  Much better now and you can see with the butterflies on the page there’s more contrast.

Two last embellishments… small black dots around the big white dots.  I used a water based Sharpie Paint Pen, an extra fine black one.  Then I used an extra fine White Paint Pen and drew around some of the black dots I made with the Punchinella I stencil.  Much, much better.

Glued the butterflies in place, but felt as though they were blending into the background too much.

So I used the extra fine black Sharpie and drew around each.  In hindsight, I wish I’d not lined around the yellow butterfly since I think it’s a little too stark.  Other than that I’m satisfied and there’s Week 40 in the books!