The good thing about butterflies is that, like peacocks, they lend themselves nicely to being whimsical. So it follows naturally that I would have at one time gone through a “butterfly period”. When you look at these remember, none of them will look “real”, but they will look “real whimsical”!

This might be my very first butterfly, kind of supposed to be a Monarch.

You can see that this one has been done with a variety of gel pens, including my favorites, the metallic and stardust.

This is from 2011, when my main subjects were flowers and butterflies.

Butterflies and fish go together in a whimsical sort of way.

This is a whimsical pine tree, complete with whimsical bugs, and a blue butterfly.

Above are some butterfly details from larger drawings you have probably seen in other posts. Below are some pictures that already looked kind of psychedelic,  made more so because I altered the color a little bit in PaintShop Pro, using the “time machine” color adjustment for the 1960s .

Here is an example of a drawing altered to “Sepia Tone” in PaintShop Pro’s “time machine” feature.

And last but not least…by now you know of my fascination with anything “Talavera”. You might also know that butterflies are are a popular theme for Talavera inspired art and pottery.

You may remember the above picture from the post “Talavera Kitchen, Part 1”. Below is a sort of “Talavera sampler” from several years ago, along with one of the stepping stones from “My Whimsical Garden, Part 2.” 

Probably my favorite “Talavera” project is also the largest drawing I have done so far. Last year Mark encouraged me to make something really big. I decided to try to loosely recreate a smaller “Talavera Butterfly” on a large poster paper. Here’s how it turned out…

This is the small version.

Here you can see the original, along with the first stages of the larger version. The small one is done with gel pens, but the larger one is made with colored pencils. The background squares were done with metallic colored pencils, which I had no idea existed before then.

Here is the finished product. At one point I noticed that the butterfly was not really in the center of the picture, but I planned on cropping it before having it framed. But as it turned out I forgot, so it wasn’t until afterwards that I noticed the mistake. Knowing that quilters in history often deliberately included a square that didn’t match their pattern in order to keep themselves from having too much pride and thinking their work was “perfect”, I figured it was just as well. I could always say that’s why I did it. (LOL)

After awhile of it being up on the wall, we got used to it and now I don’t seem to notice that it’s off center. To the right are three plates I got at JoAnn’s Fabrics, after waiting or months for them to go on sale for something like 60% off. The colors aren’t as bright in the photo as they are in real life, but this is one of the few pictures I have ever been able to get where the light isn’t reflecting off the frame’s glass. 

As you can see, there is no end to the number of whimsical possibilities for butterflies. You don’t have to worry about making them look realistic. Just call them whimsical and you can get away with just about anything!