Bitten

I have been lampworking some glass bugs and last night I got the itch to make some little ink study paintings of insects. The plan is to start incorporating some crawly things into my large floral paintings. I am just trying it out to see if I actually like painting bugs in terms of form and color.

It's kind of weird that I am suddenly interested in insects. I am not the biggest fan of bugs. When they're in the house I am not at all happy - but I really do not like killing anything, even bugs and weeds... Sigh.

I loathe spiders.

I once woke up in the middle of the night to a horrible tickling in my nose. I swatted my nose and felt, what I thought was, a giant booger fly out. Laying there, not wanting to sleep with a nasty wet booger in the bed I turned on the light and there was a big ball of crumpled white spider on my pillow. There had been a giant spider up my nose - shudder..

These little paintings are really small - the largest is about 4" square. There done with ink (brush & pen) on heavy weight watercolor paper. What really does not show up in the photos is that there is a lot of metallic and iridescent inks mixed in so they have a bit of shimmer to them. Very bug-like indeed.