Meet the beetle

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Here's the latest specimen from my entomological illustration class, a Japanese Beetle. Who knew they had little white furry patches on their sides? Not me, till I looked at them through a great little microscope very generously donated to me. It's a little shopworn but does the job of revealing a world that was not really meant to be seen by humans, what with our big clunky eyes and all. And now it seems the lowly Dung Beetle, greatly underestimated it seems, not only probably already checked out the pretty white fur on the Japanese Beetle, but also navigates by the Milky Way, which I usually can't see either! (ok, I'll blame light polution for that one). So, he eats dung—it's probably delicious. Shows how much we know!

Hope...

... tempered by four years of reality. But still hope.

A new start

 

As much as I respect Lucy, I really hope it's not so. I do feel rather hopeful somehow, not that anything out of my control is going to straighten out, but I'm thinking what is in my control (me) might. In order to do that, I need to simplify and focus. Cleaning my studio always helps, but I also need to get rid of the physical clutter around me. So one new year's resolution is to get rid of (at least) one object a day, so by the end of the year I will be down 365 objects I can live without. I'm still working on making my list of other resolutions, one of which won't be to stop procrastinating, but one will probably be to blog more consistently.

And once I wrap up my studio cleaning and organizing, I'll wrap my painting area in plastic to keep the heat in and put brush to canvas for a change! 

Subjects I plan to pursue in 2013

 

MACRO: The most beautiful place in the contiguous United States

MICRO: An ancient fly in amber, a life cut tragically short