Life Continues

Seen on a leaf of the pumpkin vine: a pair of gulf fritillaries, ensuring another generation.

Bug Collection

I've always liked bugs. I never ever pinned a bug to board. A few times I've kept them alive in jars, but mostly now I just like to watch them go about their business in the garden.

This is the larva of a gulf fritillary feeding on the passion vine on my back fence.

A monarch, a prince of a caterpillar, munching milkweed along with a little milkweed aphid.

A large milkweed bug; they feed on the seeds of the milkweed.

A beautiful praying mantis girl on a double delight rose. Color untouched.

One of the heirloom roses. You can imagine how big the flower is to support two huge green bugs who are able to ignore one another.
It's Macro Monday here and at Lisa's Chaos.

Figeater Beetles

This summer, figeater beetles have descended on my yard. I don't even have a fig tree, but there's one next door. One morning I saw two of the beetles making sweet beetle love in my bougainvillea. Then a third beetle arrived.

The beetles are large, and they make a loud buzzing sound as they fly. They are a little alarming, but only harmful if you mind sharing your figs. The iridescence on their undersides is beautiful.

Bother

It's Monday again already.

This bug showed up on my spent sunflower. It looks like it's wearing pants. I like the leaf shapes and the shadows in the photograph. I submitted it for Macro Monday. I also submitted it to What's That Bug, because I'm not sure what it is.

Monday Morning Macro

My interest and confidence in photography has been growing. Particularly close-up shots of small things. So I thought I'd participate in the Macro Mondays of Lisa's Chaos. Here is a ladybug without spots. A little out focus.

Daily Bug

I'm not really sure it's a Carolina Mantis. Some kind of praying mantis, of course, but having seen honey bees snatched out of life by those jaw-like forelegs, I hesitate to call it praying. That's the yin and yang of the food chain; one creature's demise is another creature's sustenance.

I like the way the background turned out. I needed to make something that the green mantis would show up against, something amorphous but interesting enough to draw the mantis's attention in the direction away from the viewer.

I may take a break from bugs for a little while; there's some two- and four-legged creatures I'm wanting to paint.

Organization

Like many people of my age, I came to digital photography late. In the absence of clear plastic sleeves for negatives and yellow-orange envelopes containing Kodak prints that just fit shoe boxes, I'm at a loss to organize my photographic images. I know in theory it ought to be easier. In practice, I use a huge memory card and accumulate thousands of images in my camera. As the need or whim strikes me, I pick off a few at time and store them in uselessly named files on my computer. Names like Camera, Paint, and Today. I still maintain the majority of the images on the memory cards, and often repeatedly transfer the same image to the computer. Additional chaotically arranged images are on a separate hard-drive. I add to this problem daily, and worry about it only occasionally.

I usually know what I'm looking for, and so far have been able to find it. Always in the last place I look. Tonight I was looking through my images for pictures of sparrows. Since I see sparrows everyday, there are lots of sparrow pictures spread around in lots of picture files. You may notice these aren't sparrows at all. I just came across these forgotten images tonight, and they pleased me. The passion flowers are still buds now, but before long these crazy blooms will be back, enchanting the bees of a new season. Maybe I'll get a new memory card.

Gulf Fritillary

Here is a gulf fritillary in the pear tree. I took the reference photograph early in the morning and caught the butterfly sleeping. They don't stay still long when they're awake. It was a few a months ago as you can see because the tree had leaves. These gulf fritillaries are ubiquitous in my garden. In the afternoon in season, there is always a crowd of them. I take them a little for granted in fact, and have nearly forgotten that they are exotic and beautiful, as is the passion vine that lured them to my home. They are medium-sized butterflies with proportionately long wings with silvery spots on the underside.

I'm fairly happy with this painting, especially the shadows in the folds of the wings which were tricky, and the branches which effortlessly sprung from my paint brush like magic.

Thanks to George Liang, who painted me painting, I have a new profile picture.

Honey Bee

Could I possibly sing praises that would do justice to bees? I've attempted to paint their praises. Bees provide critical pollination which enables our food to grow. And if that isn't enough, they make sweet honey and beeswax too. There is quite possibly nothing better than a bee. I am fortunate to have a garden that is full of them. They love the blooms on the lime tree, the pear tree, the roses, the passion vine, and the milkweed (shown here.) I love their stripes and their warm summer day buzz. I love my fruit and my flowers. I might want to think that my flowers smell sweet for my pleasure, but really it's all for the bees.

Between Raindrops

It's a new year. It seems to be off to a good start. I've made some resolutions. One is to draw everyday. Nothing really lovely has come of it yet, but you'll be the first to see anything worth showing off. There are lots of really nice bugs in my yard now, so many I couldn't possibly ever paint them all, so I might as well share some pictures. I'm especially happy to report that I have several of the monarch butterfly children I wished for here.

Milkweed Bug

This is an interesting study in bug identification. I used to think these were harlequin bugs. Because I knew there was such a thing, and I thought these looked somehow very harlequin-like. But then I learned that harlequin bugs were something else. So I went to some lengths to identify these based on their appearance. I tentatively determined they were box elder bugs. But they aren't. They're closely related, but I don't have box elder, and these guys live in and on the milkweed. I could have just googled "red black bug milkweed." Or not even googled "milkweed bug." My son just called them f*** bugs, because of their very pronounced reproductive drive. This happens to be the same sort of bug that's on the cover of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.

All Souls

It was a while ago that I found the dead green fig-eater beetle in my compost barrel. I suppose it metamorphosed there, and then couldn't get out. I was sad to find it dead, but it was beautiful and iridescent even in death, so I took pictures of it. I thought I might paint it, but I wasn't sure, because it was dead. Then it came to mind when I started to think of Halloween pictures. I imagined a little monster's treat bag, which included candy of course, but also some genuinely creepy things like the dead bug, a poison apple and maybe some bones. After a few confused tries, I came up with a composition I kind of like. The painting almost does the beetle justice. And while the poor beetle never had a life of flying, at least it will be remembered.

This is my painting for the Calypso Moon Artist Movement challenge. I wish I had been able to complete a brush-less painting as well. I'll keep that idea in mind for another day. It was my hope to get this one painted and posted much sooner, but things often don't go as planned.

Ladybugs

The bug series is progressing slowly. I would say I have about half as many paintings as I want. I just don't paint as much at home as I'd like; mostly I putter around on the computer, and work up guilt about all the things I'm not doing. Painting is just one little piece of what I'm not doing. I do have plenty of insect photographs to choose from, and my knowledge of insect life is expanding. This, you may have been clever enough to notice, is two views of the same bug. I made it (her, them?) redder in color, but was true to the spots. I was once bitten by a ladybug. It hurt a little, and disillusioned me a little more.

My Lucky Stripes

I live in a place that is noteworthy for its lack of remarkable weather, but these past couple of weeks we've had some. When I went out in back this morning, I was sprinkled on. Then there was a rainbow in the west. Rainbows are always opposite the sun, but, it my experience, usually in the afternoon. Here's a little slice of my rainbow.

And as if that weren't cool enough, I was inspecting my plants for signs of bug life, and I saw something I've never seen in my yard, but earnestly hoped for: a monarch butterfly's child. I rubbed my eyes, and it was still there. I snapped a picture.

A little later this morning, I went to the South Pasadena Woodland and Wildlife Park to paint. It took other painters a while to show up, and I didn't really want to paint alone. There's wildlife and then there's wildlife. After I set up and sketched, I realized I forgot my palette. I did have my tubes of paint though. I scavenged around my car and from the other painters and came up with something to stand in for my palette. I decided, since I had to squeeze out all new paint, I'd use colors I never use. I don't really recall how I even got them - they might have been giveaways. I chose the view of the backs of houses on the other side of the Arroyo. I really like my resulting painting; I especially like the freshness of the color.

And that was my very rewarding morning.

Great Golden Digger Wasp

I am pleased to have completed another bug painting. The great golden digger wasp was a new visitor to my yard this year. It is quite big and beautiful, and fully deserves its two adjectives. The eye, which I believe is more or less accurate, has a kind of disney-character look about it.

Grasshopper

Do you hear your own heartbeat? Do you hear the grasshopper which is at your feet? -- quote from Kung Fu, a television show I absolutely ate up when I was a kid. And I find grasshoppers quite special too.

Pinacate beetle

If you camp or hike or just hang around outdoors, especially in the dessert, you've probably seen these. You might know them as stinkbugs, but really many different bugs are known as stink bugs, so it's good to be specific. Pinacate comes from an Aztec word. I usually see them walking in the road. Since they can't fly and aren't all that fast, it's nice to help them to a safe place out of the path of cars or hikers.

Some of you suggested or surmised that my series of paintings could be bugs. And you are correct. I'll be painting bugs for a while. This is the third one in the series. The second, a more complicated subject, is still in progress. I enjoyed painting the ground as well as the bug. I've noticed with the bug paintings that when you make the bugs large, the background needs significantly more detail.

The computer problems persist by the way.

Fly, Number One

I think I'd like to have an art show some day. I certainly have more than enough material already, but not only is it inconsistent in quality,it's inconsistent in virtually every way. It is a mishmash. It has no unity and no focus, and I think it might look cheesy if it were displayed all together. So I thought it was time to do a series. This is the first painting in that first series.

And life goes on

I think I've never before seen a bee quite so frosted in pollen as this one.


Several months ago, our neighbor cut back her cactus. Her driveway was piled high with trimmings to which we were welcome. We moved several to our driveway. My husband donned gloves and potted cactus cuttings, one of which has moved on to its new home. He didn't pot the long piece, because it had a high center of gravity and needed a bigger pot. It lay in our driveway getting a little yellower, until a week ago it sprouted a bud, and then two nights ago, in the dark, it put forth a glorious bloom. It seems so brave, I think I have to plant it now.

More mystery plant and a fierce new life

I've been watching the praying mantis eggs for months. And finally, a little one. I know that there are many more, but I've only seen this one. All of a few hours old and about half an inch long, and ready to kill its own food.

I finished a painting tonight, after a small series of painting mishaps.