Insect Map, Finally Complete!

Wow!  Undertaking the map project was enlightening in a lot of different ways.  First, I didn't realize how much time it would take to produce something that large, with that much detail, especially when trying to capture something from my youth.  I'm happy to have done it, but happy that I can move back to something a little smaller and more manageable through a couple of hours.
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:

Insect Garden

Another lazy Saturday has found me with the options of either listening to all the innumerable talking heads spewing their rhetoric about how diabolical any political candidate currently is, or, enjoying a few hours of peace sketching and painting something that has nothing to do with any of that....consequently, I chose the later.
Inspired by the amazing work of Felicita Sala, I decided to do something a little simpler, and painting a bunch of different things and then cutting them out to add them to one composition.

Enjoy this little insect garden....done with gouache and a hint of prismacolor here and there.