inspirations- beetles

12:51

Big news. Stumpy the stick insect, prize pet of the Nut, having been procured with tooth fairy funds the week previous, has shed his skin. He now has a new leg, so he's now called longy. He's also not dead, which is good.

Also exciting, Jim returned from France and supplied the Nut with beetles. These ones are incased in acrylic resin, which is good because someone at Mr Nuts school has the complete collection of beetles in resin magazine, whereas I, in my infinite meaness, only let the Nut get the first introductory issue for 99p, which seemed a good price for plastic coated scorpion (unlike £5. 99 fortnightly). They are not supplied with names but they sure are shiny.
Summer, round here, is a very beetley time as the stag beetles emerge from being a completely gross looking lavae and take flight in all their glory. I'm not sure how they get airborne- when they are they look like they shouldn't be. They remind me of a tipsy relative getting up too fast from unsteady seating at a barbecue, chaotically teetering along flailing their arms for balance whilst shouting the beetle version of 'in coming!! Coming throughhhhhou OW' before crash landing in the shrubbery and spending a good ten minutes extricating themselves (or maybe it was just that particular beetle that was graceless?). Anyway, I think they are breeding under the decking.

The other reason I'm thinking of beetles is, I'm thinking about a beetle print I did called 'forgetting beetles', where I looked a a stag beetle hard, drew it and then re drew it periodically over a week or so without looking at the beetle again. It's a surprisingly fun and intresting thing to do, so I shall be doing it again I think. The thing I find is, that when you draw from life you get a good drawing that look like what it's supposed to, and all the nonartists will applaud you, because I've been on pintrest and we all know that good art is drawing a glass of water so realistically you have to put your pencil next to it to prove it's a picture.

However, for me, my favorite drawings are the ones are a subject I have drawn, and know, but am not drawing from life. It is as if the very essence is distilled, and though it's not how it appears in reality, that's how it appears to me, inside, it's key charactieristics. I think I'd like to work on a book of those drawings- but I also think I am wandering and thats a job for another blog post. Let me know your thoughts on the matter and I just might do it.

You can learn about stag beetles and how to help them here


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