In-between Thunderstorms

Phyllomydas parvulus, female

Thunderstorms are one of my favorite things about Florida and I am enjoying this last week's odd weather pattern: afternoon thunderstorms (typical of summer) in April. Glancing out the window at the Dirt Patch I noticed an interesting insect shape and quickly stumbled over myself to grab the camera and dart outside. Success! At a distance I thought, perhaps it is a sawfly (a relative of bees and wasps)...but then its Diptera (fly) characteristics became more apparent: one set of wings (the halteres are clearly visible above) and sucking mouthparts. This is a smaller species of Mydas fly. The female is brightly colored as seen here, and the male is a more uniform black.

Prepops fraternus

While photographing the Mydas fly, this guy flew past me and into the palmetto. It is a species of plant bug in the family Miridae.

Euthyrhynchus floridanus

I am so glad I planted the onion last December - it has attracted all kinds of interesting insects (it was a grocery store onion which began sprouting in my fridge, so I thought, "what the hell?" and planted it). Above is a predatory stinkbug on the flower stalk of the onion...NEAT! The majority of stinkbugs are vegetarians, but this is a stinkbug that will eat other stinkbugs and insects which cause a lot of damage to plants. It paused to clean the excess water from its proboscis - and my camera chose this moment to forget how to focus on its subject.

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Day 82 (Day 5 CS) - Collection

"What do you collect? Work with a collection of your own or borrow one." Pure Admiration It's funny, I only recently acknowledged to myself that yes, I do collect something: literature and art books from Heian-era Japan (794-1185), and here is a prompt for that. I just acquired the Choju Giga art book seen in the background (hooray!) which inspired me to recycle two projects from October 2015's CreativeSprint and use them in a different context. The mantispid was made on CS 2015 Day 1 and the painting is a miniature print-out of a mock Choju Giga drawing I did on CS 2015 Day 8 . The easel and paintbrush are made of kraft cardstock. [April 6, 2016]

Day 15 - Historical Precedent

Day 15 Learn about something that happened today in history and make something inspired by it. Rhinoceros Beetle Gong I now realize I may have misread the prompt. I thought I had to merely learn about some piece of history and use that as inspiration, but I'm sure on this day 1,000 years ago, 500 years ago, or even last year, a gong was sounded. Oh well! On the 15th I went to the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix and based my project on the many gongs in their collection. They had a display illustrating how gongs are traditionally made (i.e. - labor intensive), and I learned that there are generally three types of gongs ( suspended gongs or tam-tams which are flat; bossed which have a raised center, are tuned, and sometimes suspended; and bowl gongs which are more like large bells). They originated in China, their first uses are thought to be as a signal for the workers to return from the fields since some gongs are loud enough to be h...

Day 8 - Master Works

Day 8 Recreate or interpret a work of art you admire. This is based on a famous panel of the Choju Giga scroll (Animal Caricatures or Scrolls of Frolicking Animals) which was created sometime in the late 12th century in Japan. Similar to the original's ink on paper, mine was rendered in India ink and red acrylic ink on Bristol paper. I've replaced the rabbit with a click beetle trying to right itself, and the frogs were replaced with mantids (feeling ill today and my hand started cramping after I drew the beetle. The mantids aren't as well done as I would like. I may redo this sometime because I think it came out cute otherwise). The top "seal" in red says sumimasen , which is Japanese for excuse me! and the lower one is my name in Japanese. This was fun to make, but sketching with a brush is a lot harder than it looks, and no erasing! The Choju Giga artist was truly a master, I very much admire the brush work in the original. Here is the o...

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