Artsy Entomology
another fantasy watercolor journey
Hi Friend,
Remember the fantasy forests I created a couple of weeks ago? Turns out, if you look closely enough, you can find some pretty magical bugs living there as well!
These little critters started out as watercolor blobs and were extremely satisfying to bring to life. After the watercolor dries, you add or define the head, thorax and abdomen, including legs and antennae.
It was very soothing to my brain to allow myself to play around without worrying about making anything uniform or symmetrical. And then to my surprise, these drawings look well grouped and I could easily see them turned into a pattern (maybe some eco-friendly wrapping paper or perhaps a puzzle?).
If I had set out to deliberately make these a pattern, I probably would have made myself miserable, trying too hard to plan and control.
The next time the control part of my brain tries to overstep, I think I’ll just assign it the task of naming and categorizing these bugs. I recently gave my inner critic a huge messy ball of thread. It grew silent as I imagined it being completely absorbed with slowly untangling and sorting the different colors.
Does anyone else use this technique? What other methods do you use to tame your inner critics and control freaks? Would love to hear your thoughts.
xo
Tanya
Your bugs look beautiful and the process sounds like so much fun! I’m not an artist but I’ve thought about maybe taking an amateur art class. This kind of thing would be right up my alley. Thanks for sharing!
As an amateur entomologist, I love your bright little bugs!
I have a black and white blouse with patterns all made up of bugs. But having one with your colored beetles would be awesome!