Did you know…

…”Nar” is the Old Norse word for corpse. These whales are named for their mottled resemblance to drowned sailors. A bit of cetacean trivia for your day!

Pencil Overdrawing

On a steamy Alabama evening a few years ago, I saw something desperately flopping on the pavement in front of the local grocery store. At first I thought it was a small bird, but when it suddenly looped into the air I saw that it was an enormous moth. It struggled upward, scissoring the air with its wings, and then — to my surprise — it flew right in through my open truck window and landed awkwardly on the seat beside me.

This wondrous visitor was Antherea polyphemus, the largest moth in North America and one of a gorgeous retinue of silkworm moths whose beauty rivals that of any butterfly. With no functioning mouth parts, they live only about four days after emerging from their silken cocoons. My polyphemus moth friend appeared to be at the end of his short lifespan. He was missing a leg and a generous wedge of one wing, evidence of a harrowing escape from a hungry bird or the jaws of a gecko.

I let him rest on the seat during the drive home. He died somewhere along the miles of country road and so, after unloading the groceries, I placed the moth gently on my drawing table and sketched the graceful arc and lush patterns of those huge wings. A few weeks later, the sketch became the inspiration for a set of fairy wings:

Few artists use the technique, but pencil overdrawing (drawing the shading and details over a thin, flat layer of watercolor) is perfect for the subtle patterns and textures of a moth’s wing. You build the layers slowly and gradually, barely touching the paper with strokes as light as a moth, and the drawing becomes a deeply relaxing process.

We used pencil overdrawing in this week’s Draw Paint Letter email video lesson. If you like to draw, but are intimidated by realistic watercolor, it’s a good way to get your feet wet (so to speak).

Happy drawing,

Val

Garden pests, antifreeze and ice cream

Here in the deep South, our pleasantly cool winter weather is punctuated with the occasional three-or-four-day arctic blast of subfreezing temperatures. During these brief periods, much grumbling can be heard throughout the region. We don’t like the cold.

“That freeze last night killed off the rest of my winter vegetables,” we tell our friends at the local feed and seed store, the one place where such garden casualties are treated with sympathy and concern. “But at least the cold will kill off all the bugs.”

Alas, science is rapidly proving that it simply isn’t so. We now know that insect blood contains a protein that works very effectively as a natural antifreeze. The antifreeze protein prevents ice crystals from growing, so the bugs survive frigid weather and are still very much alive (and really, really hungry) when warm days return.

That’s the BAD news. The GOOD news is that the same handy antifreeze proteins are found in some fish blood, and their amazing properties offer hope for future technology that would allow transplant organs to be safely stored at low temperatures. (The antifreeze protein is already being replicated using yeast that contains a fish gene. And, um, guess where it’s being used? Let’s just say, if you’re eating a Breyers Light Double Churned chocolate ice cream bar right now, you might want to go ahead and finish it all up before you read any further…)

Blog Action Day: Monarch extinct by 2050?

 (c) val webb 2007

Today I completed this gouache painting of a monarch butterfly. As I worked, I marveled at the beauty of this tenacious little creature. I live in Alabama near the Gulf of Mexico, directly on the monarchs’ migratory path. I have seen clouds of fluttering orange butterflies struggling out across the breakers, directly into the wind, headed for the distant horizon and their overwintering home in the mountains of southern Mexico. It seems miraculous to me that they can skim over the rough water for hundreds and hundreds of miles, often on the final leg of a 2,000-mile journey that began in August up near the Canadian border. Navigating by a mysterious combination of circadian rhythm and celestial reckoning, the monarch traces the route followed by millions of his ancestors before him. 

When I was a child, monarch season meant that our beaches were under an orange-and-black invasion for several weeks each autumn. The butterflies were everywhere. Today, the numbers have diminished to the point that the migration sometimes passes unnoticed… and, if a widely accepted climate model proves to be correct, the monarch may vanish entirely within the next 50 years. If my great-grandchildren never see America’s national insect (and, incidentally, Alabama’s state insect as well) it will be because two things happened:

First, the galloping development of waterfront real estate has eliminated the monarch’s sole food source. Milkweed, deemed a nuisance weed, is systematically eradicated during the landscaping process. The coastal “way stations” where butterflies rested before flying out to sea have become rare. Even worse, development brings indiscriminate spraying of herbicides and insecticides alike, and these poisons take a toll on the monarch population.

The second threat to the monarch’s survival is climate change. The butterflies require cool, dry conditions to survive their winter months in the highlands of Mexico — but scientists predict a climate shift that would dump increasing amounts of rain on the dormant monarchs. Already, changing weather patterns have brought unprecedented freezing winter rains to the monarchs’ Mexican forests. Soaked butterflies die off quickly in the chilly mountain air; two years ago a storm killed 70 percent of overwintering monarchs. Combine the destabilized climate with frequent illegal logging of the fir groves where they winter, and you have a recipe for butterfly disaster. Several respected researchers estimate that the last monarchs could be gone for good by 2050, when precipitation levels in their winter home are predicted to triple.

There’s a great deal to admire in the monarch: beauty, persistence, the ability to transform oneself and emerge to take on the wide world. Here is an ideal symbol of renewal and fresh hope — the hope that we can find equitable ways to save some milkweed,  save some Mexican mountain fir trees, save a remarkable buttefly species for our children’s children to know and to love.