Illustration Services

Tropical Butterfly Illustrations

I love to illustrate and don’t get to do enough of it in my daily work, so sometimes I create projects for myself. Such was the case with the series of tropical butterflies I illustrated.

Each is illustrated full size using a mixed media technique I’ve perfected over the years that I thought would be especially effective in trying to capture the luminous colors in butterfly wings. It involves using both sides of a high quality velum, markers, colored pencils and inks.

The five butterflies illustrated are: Morpho anaxibia, Morpho hecuba, Ornithoptera chimaera, Papilio blumei, and Caligo placidianus.

Why those? Mostly aesthetic reasons. I loved how they looked together with their various colors and shapes, however I did try to find ones that were all of similar size.

Four of the five butterflies are drawn showing the top of the butterfly. Caligo placidianus is the exception where the underside of the butterfly is shown.

A limited edition run of prints was created and a set of greeting cards produced. The cards are blank on the inside and contain information on the butterfly pictured on the back.

30 Cards for $30

While supplies last you can order 30 assorted butterfly cards for $30.
Cards are packaged in sets of 5, containing 1 of each of the butterflies shown to the left. Each card is 5.75 x 5.75 inches square with matching envelope. (Please check with your post office for square envelope mailing rates.) Interiors are blank. For $30 you get 6 sets for a total of 30 cards. Shipping within continental US included.

Frosted Skates

Once again I had the opportunity to create a poster for our local roller derby team, the Blue Ridge Rollergirls. As I’ve noted before, I love creating their posters! They give me a theme and let me know what copy and partner logos are to be included and then let me at it.

When Drag’n SlayHer told me the theme was “Frosted Skates” my mind thought of punning off Frosted Flakes, but Celeste had done an excellent “Lucky Charms” poster not too long ago so it seemed a little too soon to do another. Frosty the Snowman seemed kinda clunky. Then I thought of the Hans Christian Anderson tale The Snow Queen – perfect, I thought – combined with sort of a Narnia White Witch image. I set about sketching, but it just wasn’t working. I couldn’t get the roller derby energy into an ice queen.

To make a long story short, after digging around the internet and thumbing through lots of books at the library, I came around to the X-Men character, Emma Frost. Now that is PERFECT. She is tough, icy, and well, her name is Frost so we end up with a pun after all.

The illustration came together nicely and I got to use some of my cool Alien Skin Photoshop filters to create icicles on the type.

Seems to me Emma Frost would make an excellent rollergirl. I’d get out of her way.