Spring How-To: Butterfly Painted In Shimmer Watercolor and Pearls
Today’s How-To is a Butterfly painted in shimmer watercolor paint
dressed up with pearls. Then the cut-out beauty is mounted
to a greeting card or on wood for Spring Decor.
I love my sisters, all 6 of them. And I’m looking forward to seeing them in a few weeks. With our 3 brothers. Reunion time! Yay!
I really don’t like it at all that we keep having birthdays and getting older, year by year by year. We’ve had so much fun all together, even though the gap between the oldest and the youngest is twenty-two years.
It hasn’t always been giggles and laughter. We’ve had the usual jealousy and hurt feelings and cruel words. Sibling rivalry. But it never lasts.
A few years ago, I made this card (and this tutorial) for a sister’s birthday:
Today we’re going to update the directions, because some of the supplies we used are no longer available.
And we’ll mount it on a wood block for Spring décor. Because it’s never too early to start thinking about Spring. And butterflies. Don’t miss the 101 on the blue morpho butterfly at the end of the post. It will surprise you!
How-To: Shimmer Watercolor Painted Butterfly
If you’re new to watercolors, you may want to check out this post before beginning. It has in-depth detail about painting with watercolor.
Supplies:
- Luminart shimmer watercolor paint in Blue Zircon, Black and Autumn Butternut. (These are no longer available. Look for Paul Ruben Metallic* (expensive, highest quality) or Yasutomo Pearlescent* (cheap and good for beginners).
- Canson 140# watercolor paper*, cut to 6″x4″. Lightly paint a watery, blue watercolor splash-patch on the rectangle. Spatter with autumn butternut. Paint two small, pale blue zircon butterflies, almost fading into the background.
- Draw and then fussy-cut a 3″ wide x 4″ tall butterfly shape out of watercolor paper. Paint this with a light wash of blue zircon shimmer watercolor paint. Let dry. Darken the edges with another coat of blue. Add detail lines if you wish. Mine are a fail, so don’t copy mine! Let dry. Mix blue with black and darken the outer edges of the wings.
- When all the paint is dry, mold the wings out from the butterfly’s body to give it dimension. Attach the butterfly to the prepped background with a strip of glue on the butterfly body. Place small pop dots under each wing near the glue to keep the wings popped out.
- Add three 1/4″ white pearl accents around the butterfly on the background piece.
- Mount the finished rectangle to a 5″x7″ greeting card. Use a narrow accent border around the first rectangle if desired.
- This time around we mounted the art on a wood block for Spring décor.
A Blue Butterfly that isn’t really blue.
One of the most famous Amazon butterfly species is the blue morpho.
It is known for its size (with a wing span of up to 8″) and unique color. It’s so bright it looks like someone altered it in Photoshop. (As if God isn’t better than PS.)
The amazing thing is, the butterfly wings aren’t actually blue. In fact, they have no color at all.
Are you going “What!” about now?
Under a microscope the blue morpho butterfly’s wings consist of millions of diamond-shaped scales. They reflect light in the precise way that looks like brilliant blue to human eyes. This is a visual illusion called “iridescence.”
Of course man couldn’t leave this alone, and expended huge effort to imitate the look. It became the $100,000 Lexus LC Structural Blue Edition. Except that it is blue. But they used the science of the blue morpho’s wings to create a blue paint that reflects 100% of the blue color instead of the typical 50%. It is the bluest, most electrifying blue ever.
The best part of the research into “structural” color is the ecological piece. Dyes using this technique could be much safer, meaning less toxic, than dyes used to color fabrics now.
Thank you, blue morpho!
