TIMETALES: The Orange Acrobat - Back View
I have always been passionate about nature and especially appreciate nature’s hidden or less noticed details. TimeTales is my drawing series focused on nuances of nature’s diminutive processes and transformations influenced by my close up nature photography. The drawings take an enormous span of time to execute because of the large amount of research on the subject performed prior to the drawing, the extensive and necessary photography of the developing subject matter as well as the numerous views of the subject illustrated in each drawing. While my creative process involves an intense drawing preparation sequence, the research is interesting and educational and arranging and implementing the stages of development into compositions is a fascinating journey. I wouldn’t approach this series of drawings in any other way because it would lead to an inaccurate portrayal of the subject.
This drawing illustrates the Monarch butterfly in the eclosure process from the back view. It is illustrated in a poster type format with large titles and dates of the event to humorously refer to the insect transformation as a “show” that took place. In a sense it was. The drawing reads from left to right within a horizontal format with time increments noted between portrayals of eclosure activity. The time increments are comprised of vertical spaces labeled as weeks, hours, minutes and seconds. They are placed in between drawn boxes housing individual drawings of Monarch chrysalids in progressing stages of eclosure development.
Presently, the Monarch is the focus of many conservation efforts to increase its declining population. It has become a cultural icon to many people symbolizing wildlife species declining in numbers and needing safeguarding. My desire in depicting the beauty of its chrysalis colors and birth process emerging out of the chrysalis is to increase viewers’ aesthetic appreciation of this remarkable migrating insect and possibly initiate a viewer’s conservation effort.