We had a wonderful day today at the butterfly museum in Houston. And I was very glad I brought my notebook!

I’ve done paintings of butterflies before, so this was an opportunity to revisit the anatomy of these beautiful, wildly varied creatures.

The butterfly museum was wonderfully done. It was very informative and the area where the butterflies were was huge and beautiful.

Drawing from life was a lot of fun. I didn’t have a lot of time to draw any of these butterflies, so the color patterns were difficult to get.  I managed to get some basics, however.

Got the patterns on half of this one, but got the full shape. While watching the butterflies, I noticed a few more things about how butterflies are put together. Like how the proboscis hangs out and curls under, how the wings are made up of two main parts and how the thoracic portion (I think that’s what it was called) angles down relative to the head.

The butterfly exhibit also had a lot of wonderful flora and fauna. So, I tried to capture some of that too.

I am still trying to figure out how you draw the translucent nature of the leaves.

So, here’s where the “whispers” come in:

The other thing I spent time on today was ears. I think I’ve got the parts in mind now. One of the keys is keeping in mind which parts of the ear show in front of which parts.