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#59 Polyommatus dama

Endangered

Lepidoptera Week


There doesn't seem to be a common name for these, or at least none that I could find. I did find one scientific article on studying these. The author talked about sticking them in an envelope for a couple hours before killing them and dismantling them. The article may have had a lot of information about the butterfly, but that was as far as I could read. Beyond that, all I found out about them is that they are from shrub lands in Turkey, and their biggest threat is habitat loss. I don't know anything. The IUCN only said that they are known from one place and in low numbers. I assume they have similar attributes to other butterflies that look almost exactly like them, but I really have no idea.


While I absolutely love the depth of colour you can get with oil paint in comparison to the watercolours I had and I can get much more intense colours, both paints pale in comparison to pastels. Pastels are not as easy to re-work as oils and I cannot do as fine of details really, if I want obnoxiously bright colour though pastels are my best tool for the job. In this case, I mostly used French Ultramarine blue as well as some Cobalt Blue Hue. While I think the blue is beautiful, it is nowhere near as vibrant as the actual butterfly is. I worry that the next two weeks will be a lot of me apologizing that I'm unable to get the colour as bright as the butterfly is, and I will not be able to depict the iridescent aspect of some of them too. I am going to do my best, but I strongly suggest you look up each and every one of the butterflies and moths I paint to see actual photos of them so you can see just how beautiful they are, even the simple brownish ones like what I painted yesterday.


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