On the wing

Milkweed, a monarch caterpillar and a monarch chrysalis painted on the wings of a monarch butterfly.

I started with a base coat of white acrylic paint that had not been thinned. The tiny scales on the butterfly wing cause water based paints to bead up so the acrylic provided a great  bottom coat. I used watercolor gouache and gold paint to execute the rest of the miniature.

The most difficult portion of this is that you cannot sketch on the wing without putting the graphite straight through the wing so I sketched an image to scale and then free painted everything on the wing. Additionally, you can’t hold on to the butterfly to keep it from moving without damaging the wing edges. I used a few small flat-bottom glass pebbles placed around the butterfly to help hold it still. Don’t attempt this is a breezy room or on an evening when you don’t have a lot of patience to spare.