OniOniOniArt

Continuing down the miniature path...here is a wee stag beetle. It was made the same way as the tiny fiery searcher . sketch cut stamp color! The tiny stag beetle can be viewed in my shop  HERE [March 3, 2020]

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]

This counts for three days...because I need to catch up!  (And I'm combining posts, also because I need to catch up). Day 59: A blue pleasing fungus beetle (yes, that is its common name), outlined with a brush pen onto ACEO-sized watercolor paper. Day 60: A metallic wood boring beetle, also outlined with a brush pen on the same paper. Day 61: Color and Splatter! As seen above, I've painted the beetles with water color, and I'm masking them for the splattering process ( t his is so I can splatter the background without getting any onto the beetles in theory) . For a mask, I've traced the outlines of the beetles onto clear acetate film and cut them out. I actually do have some Frisket film which is made especially for this sort of thing, but it is more time consuming to cut out and this method works pretty well. Using water color paint and a paint brush, I splattered the paper by "flicking" the bristles. Once it dr...

I saw a luna moth float by like a ghost in the evening last night and wanted to make these earrings.  I utilized an old drawing I had on hand - I used this as a transfer previously to paint a moth on a book I made Here are the moths colored and cut out on shrink plastic before baking them And here they are after baking and assembly! They can be viewed on my shop here . [February 14, 2020]

Pasimachus is a genus of predatory ground beetle. The pronotum and head are broad and fused. Mostly they are black, but some species have beautiful iridescent green or blue/violet margins. My rendition appears to be dead...squished...sorry Pasimachus. Once the trajectory of the brush pen is in place, it can't really be changed! [February 5, 2020]

I was struck by the beautiful contrasting colors of this stinkbug, which I more or less pulled off here with colored pencils. [February 3, 2020]

This predatory ground beetle (Carabidae) has a beautiful violet streak down its sides and on its pronotum. This is a sketch with the brush pen and violet acrylic paint. [February 2, 2020] PS - Happy Groundhog Day

This sketch is based off the pink elephant hawk moth (Sphingidae) which is beautifully colored with a rich tan and pink. I'd like to do a color rendition at some point. [January 30, 2020]

Like most adolescents, this katydid nymph seems a little out of proportion. [January 29, 2020]

I still have some gold & brown ink splatter paper leftover from Day 20 and decided to sketch another fossil insect. The wasp looks like an ancestor to today's spider hunting wasps with its curly antennae. I actually made this paper a few years ago and then decided it was too textured to use. The brush pen handles the texture pretty well, but there are a few spots where the metallic gold is too thick and the India ink (from the brush pen) doesn't quite adhere. [January 28, 2020]

The ice scorpion is a member of the Scorpionfly family which has the uncanny ability to traverse snow in the winter.  [January 27, 2020]

The 17-year cicada spends most of its life as a larva underground, sucking on tree roots, when miraculously at 17 years of age, all the members of that particular brood come to the surface to mate, lay eggs, and die over the course of many days. How they synchronize their emergence is still a bit of a mystery. Brood IX will be emerging this year in NC, VA, and WV. I'd love to witness their mass emergence and subsequent chaos as they cover every available space and loudly declare their arrival. It also got me thinking, 17 years is a long time...where was I 17 years ago?  Looking back that puts us in early 2003...I was in college and that same year I took a course in entomology. I was working at Petsmart and living in my first solo apartment in Casselberry. I was obsessed with anime and wasn't yet a vegetarian. I had a 1-year old nephew [who is graduating high school this year]. I had two orange fur babies, lots of reptiles, a newt, and some fish. Also, so much strife over t...

This morning again, I suffered from shaking coffee hand...so it's a bit jagged. [January 25, 2020]

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 ...