OniOniOniArt

It's been a while! I needn't tell anyone this has been a crazy year (I think everyone is going to remember 2020), but besides the craziness of the world beyond, it has personally been a crazy year for other reasons. Namely, the Maine farm mentioned HERE and HERE  is now finally ours. It's been nearly a year long process and gut-wrenching to say the least. We visited the property last week, and it is in need of much work - it is currently nearly gutted. So we'll be in Florida a while longer while we work on that. It's going to be a slow transition, but we consider ourselves very lucky! Actually, we're very lucky for many reasons looking back over the general tumult of the year.... The lizards above - green anole pencil drawings and their inked counterparts on watercolor paper - are all part of a little project I'm working on. I will update this post as I complete more of it.

I love miniature things and I already had these tiny easels so I decided to make some mini stamps which I could then color with watercolor paints. As always, I start with a sketch: The fiery searcher is a very colorful predatory ground beetle in the Order Carabidae. Next I transfer the sketch by laying it on the stamping material and rubbing the reverse side with a pencil: Then I begin to cut out the image: Done! Next I stamped the image onto watercolor paper with waterproof black ink: Then I painted it with watercolors: Next I highlighted certain parts with gold ink and cut it out to the desired tiny size: You can view the piece in my shop  HERE [March 2, 2020]

Making earrings is usually a two-day process due to the drying time for the varnish, so I'm combining my bug days here and making two pairs! The first is a tropical stinkbug from the Amazon (above), and the second is a lovely blue weevil from Papua New Guinea (below). This post is a photo summary of how I make them... I start with a drawing... Frequently I will make mirror versions using the computer, so they appear to face the same direction when being worn, but these are fairly symmetrical and shouldn't make a difference*. I will also re-size them if necessary. Then I choose the colored pencils I will use... Using a sharpie marker, I outline the drawing onto the shrink plastic sheet: Then I color them with colored pencils: I punch holes for the jump rings and then cut them out with scissors. Besides making the design, the cutting can be the most time-consuming part of the whole process: Here they are cut out and ...

Behavior-wise, I maintain that mantispids (mantid flies in the order Neuroptera) are more badass than mantids (arguments here and here and not so much here , but how cute!). However, mantids definitely win the "Best Costume" category with their myriad forms of spines, mimicry, color, and spectacle. The boxer mantis is a good example. Here is the under-drawing, or first layer sketch. Drawings, paintings, etc are made in layers - like constructing a building, you need a sturdy frame first. The first layer is where I attempt to line everything up and make it proportionate. I then do a more detailed second layer, and sometimes an even more detailed third layer. I always start with a light pencil (an HB here), I will sometimes then outline and shade with a softer, darker pencil (a 3B works nice, like this drawing , although I stopped with the HB here). Side Bar:  I made it to one month! Woo! Only two slip-ups which were redeemed with terrible (and terribly cartoonish...

For today I decided to reprise my old Creative Sprint project from October 2015 . I always wanted to turn it into a card for my shop, but never got around to it (huh, imagine that, Procrastinating...so unlike me!). So I decided to turn it into a two-color stamp. First I made a register, something to help me line up the stamps with (it's the brown paper under the green bee at top). Then I created transfers for the design utilizing the register so everything *in theory* lines up. One transfer is for the black color, the second is for yellow (which for testing purposes is green, because I have a green stamp pad. I use block printing ink for the actual cards). Above is the yellow stamp, in the process of being cut. After inking the completed stamp, I attempt to line it up with the register so I can mark the paper to assist in lining up the black stamp. Right now it looks like a green potato. Above is the transferred black stamp image before ...

I seem to be making a lot of stag beetles this year. In 2016 , it was preying mantids. Here I've taken my brush pen sketch from  Day 12 and turned it into a stamp. I mostly use these to make greeting cards in my etsy shop.  First I printed out a smaller version of my drawing and outlined it in pencil. Then I taped it face down to a piece of speedy carve, a rubber stamping material.  Rubbing the opposite side with the pencil transfers the lines to the speedy carve. I carve the outlines with my lino-cutting tool: ...and here is the finished stamp... UPDATE!: I made mini greeting cards with this stamp which can be viewed in my shop HERE [January 23, 2020]