One of our neighbors with children raise Monarchs and while Terry was out walking Miya, he was called over to check out butterflies emerging from their Chrysalis. He came back to the house to get his camera and went back over taking pictures and learning more about the process.
This family plants Milkweed in pots to attract Monarchs. Eggs are laid followed by the caterpillars. These caterpillars are fed the leaves of the milkweed to keep them around so they create their Chrysalis in the plants. The family moves these plants inside a pop up screened housing you can purchase for this purpose and enjoy the time when the Monarchs emerge. The wife also created a board with rope they hang under their outside porch light. It's evident that the family takes a few of the Chrysalis by hand and tie to the rope where they stay until the butterflies emerge.
How neat for those children to be apart of that experience!!! I learned a lot from this as well.
Terry was told this continues until around October so we have plenty of time should Terry follow through with trying this himself.
From photos, I worked these both digitally and in my sketchbook. I wanted the digital to be more like how I work in my sketchbooks rather than in depth or formal like I've been doing lately in Procreate (like the portraits and flowers, etc.).
This follows one of the photos Terry took - using Procreate and Gouache brush tool for color work and BJD's Standard Inker for line work and writing.
Then I decided to split between two pages as seen in my handsewn journal using old stock of Fabriano Hotpress paper (140lb). One page worked with Urban Grey in TWSBI 580ALR and the other using #41 Brown in another TWSBI 580ALR foutain pen (both with F nibs).
Side Note: When I started working on the hotpress paper with my fountain pens, I didn't like the feel of the nib moving across the paper. I've worked on hotpress before and do not remember this at all even with EF nibs. It felt like I was trying to draw or write on a paper with a coating somewhat like you'd find on wax paper. And whatever it was appeared to collect on the nib and cause thicker lines and tiny blobs I didn't like. At first my lines were real light and when I went back over them, it's like the grooves the nib made on the paper grabbed the next pass of ink and was really dark. Was really weird.
The first page I worked (out of three) was like this and I stopped what I was doing leaving the sketch unfinished. I may return to that page later. I decided to work on the next page for the above illustrations/writing and it was different. I didn't have the issues on either of the next two pages. I'm wondering if when making the books oil or something didn't end up on that one page. Or maybe the old stock of paper I used is inconsistent with its sizing properties. I won't know until I continue using this journal book.
