I also learned that drawing a map of a place you once knew brought back a lot of memories, transported me back in time to almost reliving some of the things that occurred there.
When painting this map, I remembered being chastened once for not watering Dad's garden the way that he showed me, but also how he rushed to me in the garden after that reprimand when he noticed that I was tearful at the rebuke. I remember him kneeling in the soft, dark soil and asking him to forgive me for hurting my feelings.
I remembered laying under the massive cherry trees we had in the yard and playing with my dog, "Pepper" and watching the birds come and eat the cherries that were in abundance.
I also remember tying strings in a 45 degree angle to the side of my house, staking it to the ground, and then finding tomato worms in the garden and having races up those strings as the worms slowly crawled from the bottom of the string to the top. GOOD TIMES!
Anyway, I hope you get as much enjoyment out of the finished product as I have had making it. It's clear that I love painting insects, studying them and finding out what makes them tick...but I think I'm going to take a pass for a while on the little critters. I also learned that when you do big projects, its harder to document.....I couldn't really scan anything, so I just had to take pictures of various details. Sorry about the poorer quality on the photos.
Here's a few close-ups of some of the insects:
