The Tattered Wing

This is another butterfly in my butterfly garden collection. I painted several in order to get this one right. I guess that's the way with life. We practice until we become free. Every mistake teaches us something that helps us to be us.

The Tattered Wing (Watercolor full sheet)

Petal Tips! This painting is on a full sheet 300# paper. The beauty of this one is the spontaneous response to the paint and water. I love the fact that some of the wing is missing. This makes the painting more appealing and interesting. This painting was done wet on dry. This means, I did not wet the paper first, but laid the paint on a dry sheet of paper.

The way this works, is that I worked with a very, very wet brush, full of paint and water and I kept a wet edge all through the painting. This painting was probably done in thirty minutes at most. There is no time to doddle. You need to know exactly where you are going. That's why you will probably need to practice on the back of some of your old paper first. 

Each stroke counts. I started with Payne's grey. I worked from the center out. I used a half inch flat brush with a chiseled slant. I use this a lot in watercolor. I lay it flat to get the paint down, but I also can turn it on its edge and get a perfect line. 

I laid in the Payne's grey first from center out. While I had a wet edge, I washed my brush and worked the yellow from the edge into the grey, then the purple into the grey, washing my brush between colors. While the paint was still damp,I took a credit card and lifted the paint. You can use the tip of the palette knife or the tip of your watercolor brush handle to do the same. 

Another way to get the lines in the wings, before you put in the color,  take a white candle, or a white crayon will do the same, and draw in the lines. Where the wax is, the paint will not stick to it. The lines will remain no matter what paint you lay over it. 

If you notice the drips. I was working so wet and it was on a slope, so the paint dripped. I liked it, I felt it had a story to tell. 

Meanderings~~~~I could write a book on The Tattered Wing. And where do I start?

If we look carefully, most of us have a few bruises which life has afforded us. Just as the painting, the incomplete wing becomes the most interesting part of the butterfly. That is where its story lies and that is where our story begins.

Most of us didn'tt get our story right the first time. It usually starts when we are in the cocoon. In the struggle to be free, the wings must have time to develop in the cocoon, it is the fluid in the struggle that produces the wings.

And yet we continue to fly because that is who we are. In each one of us, God has invested in us, Himself, who He is and who we are. He puts in us something that keeps us afloat. Maybe its determination, guts, integrity or the desire to be better than we are. Whatever it is, we fly because it is who we are and how we are made.