Tag: bugs

#100TinyBugs – The Wrap Up

All 100 tiny bugs together

I was going to make a fun little video of all my bugs but that didn’t work out.  I was going to make a cool infographic about my bugs but that also hasn’t panned out.  Who needs that stuff for a post?  Not me – I can make this wrap up fun anyway right?  Well, fun if you like to see numbers.

Since it wouldn’t be much of a wrap up without some fun stats here are some numbers for you.  Out of the 100 tiny bugs 45 of them were beetles, 34 were butterflies and moths, and 21 were a variety of other insects and one arachnid.  In the end I wasn’t too surprised about almost half of my bugs being beetles.  I originally thought I would do a lot more butterflies but I enjoyed the variety and colors of the beetles more.

What about colors?  I did manage to use a good range of colors.  Oddly enough the color I used most was orange and/or yellow.  In so many cases the oranges and yellows were mixed together on the bugs so I just grouped them.  Blue came in at 20 and green was close behind at 18.  Those numbers don’t surprise me since I love those colors.  At times I had to stop myself from painting yet another blue bug.

One of the oddest things to me was my most popular bug post.  Instagram is a bit odd with it’s ever changing algorithms but for some reason my cicada post garnered 167 likes.

This little guy got the most likes

Some great things happened for me during this project.  I did gain a lot of great followers on my Instagram but the best part for me was how the daily process of drawing and painting a bug helped me to establish a daily art practice.  Since this project ended I’ve not only been creating and posting art daily I feel like I’ve upped my game.  My confidence in my technical drawing has grown and now I’m moving into other, more challenging areas.  My watercolor skills improved significantly as well.  I’m starting to realize that doing something every day for 3+ months will truly establish your skill base.  The whole learning by doing thing.

Anyway, this concludes my #100TinyBugs project.  If you missed any of my bugs or you just want to check them out you can always look at all of my bugs here.  I made a hashtag for them so they are all grouped together.  Thanks for sharing this adventure with me.  It’s been amazing.

#100TinyBugs – 61 through 80

I’ll be wrapping up my #100TinyBugs for The 100 Day Project shortly so I want to get all these bugs posted for everyone to see.  Here are bugs 61 through 80 for your enjoyment.

Bugs 61 to 80

Just to mix things up I’m breaking up the bugs this time by top down view vs. not top down view.  I really like the top down view for it’s symmetry but I also find that it’s a limited view.  It doesn’t show just how interesting some of the bug shapes are.  Usually the top down views are referencing specimen photos.  I think scientists and collectors really like to take top down specimen photos.  I certainly like it because there are literally thousands of them out there for me to use as a reference.

9 bugs in top down view

I did 11 bugs in various profile views.  I even did two from the front – the one and only spider out of all 100 bugs and one leaf hopper with a giant face.  One other unique “bug” out of this 20 was actually a chrysalis.  I just figured I’d give it a go.  Also, look at that adorable ladybug!

11 bugs in other poses

This set of 20 bugs included 3 bugs with distinctly pink color in them.  A lot of bugs hint at pink but the spider, beetle, and moth all had some serious pink hues going on.

Bugs with Pink

I hope you enjoyed these 20 bugs.  I’ll post 81 through 100 next week.  As always you can also view all of my bug pictures on my Instagram account.  Thanks for joining me on this fun adventure.

 

#100TinyBugs – 41 through 60

Here’s a new batch of tiny bugs for your enjoyment. At 40 I decided to start drawing bugs as you would most likely see them in nature. I like the top down view of bugs but that is such a limited angle and I wanted to show more variation. I also wanted to push myself and doing different profiles and side views has been a great learning experience.

Bugs 41 to 60

In this set of 20 I did five butterflies and one incredibly pink moth.  I didn’t realize I had done so many different colors of butterflies until I took this picture.

Five butterflies and a pole dancing moth

I did four bugs that weren’t beetles or butterflies or moths. The fly creeped me out and was not a popular post. He’s well executed but flies are not popular in general I think. And technically the green guy that looks like a grasshopper is actually a beetle but he doesn’t have that typical beetle look.

Four miscellaneous bugs

Lots of beetles this time. Technically the yellow faced stinkbug is not a beetle but I think he really wanted to be a beetle and he snuck into that pile for pictures. Maybe he swapped with the green grasshopper like bug.  The bug in the center is a Texas native and the only bug so far in the project that I drew from a photo I took myself.  He’s an Ironclad beetle and it’s shell is so hard that entomologists have to drill holes to pin them.

Yay beetles

I was so happy with so many of the drawings from this set of 20 that I do not have any I would consider my favorite this time. What I did pull out though were three that I thought showed the greatest skill improvement. In this 20 I felt like my level of detail in the ink drawing greatly improved and I was definitely becoming more confident in my watercolor abilities.

As always you can see all of my bugs on my Instagram. Thanks for your visits and all of your support!

#100TinyBugs – the first 20 bugs

I just posted bug #53 on Instagram this morning but I want to focus these posts on smaller groups so here are the first 20 bugs I did for my 100 Day Project – #100TinyBugs – all in order.  I feel I started to hit my stride around the 8th bug.

#100TinyBugs 1-20

The majority of the bugs ended up being butterflies.  There may be one moth in there but I’m finding that a lot of the insects I think are moths are actually butterflies.

Mostly butterflies…

I did six other bugs because I really do want to draw all sorts of insects and not just butterflies.  Honestly I find the beetles a lot more interesting to draw and paint.

The other bugs

 

I’m still totally embarrassed by that first ladybug but that’s part of the learning process I suppose.  At this point though I’m pleased with the progress I’m making and I’m certainly more confident in my drawing and watercolor skills.  If  you’d like to see all of my little bugs you can check them out on my Instagram.

The difference a month makes

When I started The 100 Day Project I had a couple of goals in mind.  I wanted to improve my technical drawing skills and I mainly wanted to improve my watercolor painting skill.  One thing I hadn’t expected was to see so much improvement in just a month of daily practice.  I mean, I know daily practice is a good thing, I just didn’t think I would notice that big of a change.  I’ve been noticing subtle improvements and they’ve made me happy but with my latest bug I noticed a huge difference.

Early on I drew a ladybug because I didn’t want to just do butterflies and I thought a ladybug would be “easy”.  I was not happy with the results but the point of the project is to post your failures along with the successes.  Yesterday I did another ladybug and well, the progress is pretty obvious even to me.

Now I have to say I’m extremely happy that I joined this project and I’m excited to see what I’m doing at the end of 100 days.

If you want to follow my progress you can check out all of my tiny bug posts at http://www.instagram.com/tinytrollstudios/.

 

#100tinybugs – My 100 Day Project

I have joined the 100 Day Project this year.  The 100 Day Project is a challenge to do 100 of something.  It could be art or writing or photography or quilting or fingernails.  I chose little drawings of tiny bugs.  Tiny because it allows me to actually complete at least 1 a day and bugs because they are kind of cool and it was different.

 

 

I’m hoping to improve my pen sketching skills and I intend to color the majority of them using watercolor and/or colored pencils so I’ll get more practice with those mediums as well.

 

 

All of my tiny drawings will be on 2 inch square pieces of watercolor paper.  Also known as Twinchies.  If you are interested in following along with my progress check out my Tiny Troll Studios Instagram.  I’m using the hashtag #100tinybugs on all of my project drawings.

 

 

So far on my bug list I have:

  • butterflies
  • dragonflies
  • bees
  • moths

What bugs am I missing that you’d like to see me draw and paint?