All the texture that I built up on the surface really does enhance the overall effect.

The Bubbles Painting by Jane Davenport

Paper Kite Butterfly

the beautiful Paper Kite butterfly

Scientific name: Idea leuconoe

This large, striking, black-and-white butterfly flits and floats in the air, like a piece of paper drifting in the wind. Its huge 9 to 10cm wingspan is accentuated by spectacular pattern. It is also known as the Rice Paper butterfly and Large Tree Nymph.

This GORGEOUS tropical butterfly has managed to spread its wings all over the world, simply by being beautiful. You may not have seen it in the wild (I haven’t yet!), but chances are if you have been to a butterfly house, then you have witnessed its loveliness. As you can see, it is attracted to red flowers, so wear a red top or hat if you want one to land on you!

It is a popular butterfly to have in captivity at Butterfly houses because of its size and slower flying pattern. I have photographed them in butterfly houses in Germany, all across the USA, in Australia, Thailand and South Africa. I created these images at ‘That Butterfly Place’ in Branson, Missouri.

In the wild it is found from India through Malaysia and SE Asia.  It is bred commercially in the Phillipines and Malaysia and each chrysalis carefully packed and sent to new butterfly houses around the world.

The chrysalis and newly emerged Paper kite butterflies

The chrysalis is just as beautiful as the butterfly in my opinion. They are yellow with metallic gold and black markings as in the above images. You can see the empty chrysalis with the emerged adult butterflies stretching their newly freed wings.

As caterpillars they eat plants with bitter-tasting alkaloids, which in turn give them a bitter taste and protect them from predation even as butterflies. I look forward to photographing the caterpillars one day…

The Reference shot : remembering scale

Not every shot I take is aimed at being an aesthetic wonder! Reference shots, which are seldom attractive,  are hugely important for many reasons, and one is scale.

It is actually very hard to remember the correct size of something after the event. In my mind’s eye at least, my subjects bugjects grow in stature! And I am often surprised when I find a beetle or bug that I have previously photographed, at just how small it actually is! My recollections are tampered with because I am looking at my images at many times magnification.

So I find it really helpful to take a reference shot just to indicate the size of my bugject.  A ruler is most accurate, but my phone, hand, sunglasses and toes all make appearances.  If my bugject’s patience allows, I try and get them in the reference shot, but sometimes that is impossible, so in amongst my lovely close-up shots of a butterfly, you will find a random, uncomposed shot of the whole plant it was sitting on. With bigger subjects such as birds, I always try and get a shot of the whole tree, preferably with a person under it, so the scale is recorded.

Reference shots to show the 'scale' of your smaller subjects are important and helpful!

I learned this trick from studying my grandfather’s slides. He was a ‘Gentleman Collector’ and fortunate to be able to indulge in a pastime passed down the ancestral line.  As ‘landed gentry’ it was respectable to devote time in naturalist pursuits such as fossil, butterfly and orchid cataloguing, observing and collecting.

Thankfully, rather than killing hordes of animals to display, he used the camera to collect and record the nature around him. Amongst his thousands of his slides and films, there are many of family, but the overwhelming majority of photos portray a passion for wildflowers from the south-west of Western Australia. The slides themselves are not aesthetic wonders, but a determined and loving effort to capture the amazing breadth of variety and detail in his lens’s gaze. What I find most fascinating is that each one has an everyday object, such as a coin, matchbox or match ruler, placed alongside the subject so that the scale can be seen. Without this attention to detail, there really is no way of telling just how tiny these flowers are, unless you look up the size in a reference book!

I blogged earlier in the week about a Giant water bug that I found, and included one  of my reference images, which is a more rarely seen beast than the secretive, mud-dwelling creature! But to show how big the subject bugject was, it needed a reference point, so I used a pen. I certainly won’t be using the image for an Art print, but a wonderful reference accessory.

I work with Ozcorp Card and Stationery Co in Australia for my stationery range. I have cards, journals, writing pads, diaries, address books, calendars and even sticky notes featuring my artwork with them!  You can see some of the range on my shop website : here and here. I love it when I am at a meeting or new friend’s house, and I see one of my creations in use. I get very excited when I walk into a nice store or papershop and see a display of my stationery, where I am known to do a little girl jig, and then rearrange and tidy everything!

The image  on the guestbook is called Tropic Love.  I created it in a Plumeria grove in Hawaii. When I look at it I can still feel the bliss of that day…the thrill of discovering such a beautiful place…warm tropical sunshine on my back… the heady, delicious fragrance from thousands of flowers…and plenty of time to relax into making photos…what a dreamy day it was…

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Some would say Australians have big heads (anyone who watched Flight of the Conchords has been taught this ‘ fact’). And some Australians have big everything else to match – I am referring of course to our insect’s tendency  towards gigantism. The world’s heaviest moth and cockroach reside here (yay?).  We have the Titan stick insects, Golith stick insect,  King cricket, Colossus earwig and,  drum roll please, the Giant water bug!

In 2006 I picked up an issue of Australian Geographic in the Sydney airport that featured and fantastic article on GIANT Insects. I was glued to the article during my flight. Most insects I was familiar with, or had least heard of, but one stood out…the Giant water bug. But as it is a mud-dweller and I am not, I thought it was unlikely we would meet each other in this lifetime. But I was very wrong…

As I dragged by suitcase up the drive way from the taxi, I noticed a big ‘thing’ just lying there. Yes, it was a Giant water bug – weird huh?! It wasn’t alive, but it was giant. Not as big as the 7cm quoted in the magazine, but plenty big enough. I guessed  that a bird must have caught it, the bug put up a heck of a fight, and was dropped. Although its wings are clearly visible, I just could not believe that it could fly, but fly they can! Anyway the word must be out for my bug portraits, because I found another one on my driveway!

I found this fellow (or fellow-ette? I can’t tell…) on its back, waving its legs in the air and from a distance, I though it was an emaciated mouse. So I went over to rescue the poor thing and -woah!- that ‘aint no mouse – HUGE bug-beast! I should have recognised the creature much sooner, but really it is just so unusual looking. So  i relished my chance to at last  photograph one of these relatively unknown critters.

It is a fearsome predator when it is lurking at home in the water or rivers, pools and lagoons. It likes a bit of mud and debris to hide amongst as it stalks tadpoles, small fish, crustaceans and other aquatic insects. A similar creature in the USA is called a ‘toe biter’ because of the painful but non-poisonous bite they can give. So you can imagine, I was very careful when handling it!

As far as making it look beautiful…well let’s be realistic… there just isn’t a chance of that happening! But to get the amazing details, I decided to photograph the Giant water bug in its element and to make it really stand out, I placed it in a white bowl with spring water. It happily swum around, but watching it throw its beefy arms over the side and hoist itself up and out when it had enough of a paddle, was a little alarming.

I also took the bug’s photo with a pen, so you could see just how big it was. My grandfather was a keen nature photographer and I have 1000’s of kodachrome slides with rare wildflowers and a coin or matchstick placed carefully alongside for scale. It is not aesthetically pleasing, but as a reference shot amongst your images, is a wonderful habit to acquire.

I wanted to get a shot of it in its natural habitat, but is virtually dissapeared into the creeek bank as soon as a let it go and as I find my fingers quite handy, I decided not to poke around in the mud for it.

Next week I will choose a creature to feature that is just as fascinating, but a little better looking!

1. ‘Sects in the City!

It gives me great pleasure to start writing about bugs in a regular way again! I started ‘Sects in the City as a column published in Burke’s Backyard Magazine and had a lovely page there in every issue for 5 years.  It was a very popular regular feature. Look out for it on Mondays! I am writing about an exciting creature I found and photographed yesterday for the first column!

2. ArtoMology : Shutterbug tips with Jane Davenport

Just in time for the weekend, I will share a few of my photography tricks with you!

And! I just sorted Feedburner out – so if you would like these posts delivered straight in to your email box, why not subscribe to the blog (go on…you know you want to…!).

Leave a few comments on what kind of things you would like to learn…

…modern photography is just so neat and clean…well it can be! I certainly like my studio nice and organised so I can find the right lenses …but painting…oooh the delightful mess! these images show the fun I had painting a  tree a few weeks ago…I painted my hands and leaves and then pressed them onto my canvas in different shapes on my canvas to create texture – yes like a child! Such mess and fun.

When I walked past my photography studio covered in colour,  i saw my cameras shudder and shrink to the back of their shelves….I had to calm them down…”  it’s alright my little pets, Mama would never touch you with the nasty paint…”…

I was tinkering and shooting for hours and hours and hours a day. I will use the images for signed prints, and I shot them off to some of my art licensing partners and they fainted all over the place and demanded hi-res versions..so excitingness on many levels!

My Acrylic painting class is with Bernadette Curtin (Bernie!),

It is still a work in progress….And I worked a little more on the ‘Collage’ painting today, and don’t really want to post it …but as this is in the spirit of expanding my boundaries…Courage my Love! Here goes…

The plan for this painting is to add text across it, so that the colours, bubbles and textures form an underpainting. So that will be the next step. eeeeeeeek!

………………UPDATE – I finished this painting! Look for Courage my Love part 2!

But it has been so long since I picked up a paintbrush, that I felt I needed a bit of  refreshment at a workshop or two, or three….I discovered that the wonderful  Still at The Centre, which is an Art Gallery just down the road from my studio ( that I had a solo exhibition at), had created a plethora of art classes. So I am attending just about all of them!

I have been re-familiarising myself with acrylics, gouache and ink; life drawing, still life drawing and creative drawing. I have discovered Art Journalling (love.).

I adore my teachers, all of them are successful local artists with so much to share. I respond well to the time pressure of the three hour classes. I really, really enjoy creating works in the company of my classmates. And working in a different studio is fun (I don’t have to worry about paint spilling on my divine new carpet!). And then there is the art supplies store in the gallery…delicious den of delights…how I love to browse through all the pastels, pencils, papers and paints.

I am at a different class nearly every day. I load up my gear, and ride my bicycle there,  carrying my canvas like a shield! And you would think that I would be burning up creative energy and not have space left for my photography and projects…but no! I have never been so prolific. I am  art-ing everyday. Oh bliss, bliss, bliss!

If you are in Byron Bay, you must, must, must come and participate in an art class. You can just join in for individual classes, come to a few, or attend the whole term. They are challenging and relaxing in equal measure, and always fun. And if you are not in Byron, well, go and find an art class near you, and do life drawing, or painting or whatever takes your fancy. (do it!, do it! do it!  ; )  )

Last night I did a quick little count of  how many classes I have done since leaving school…I have listed over 70 so far. Yes. SEV.EN.TY.  Most of them are art or creativity based. From international workshops : fashion illustration in Paris, fashion photography in London, Children’s book illustration in Bologna, PhotoShop in Sante Fe, Fine Art printing in Maine, and nature photography in San Francisco.  To my time in Sydney where I studied at the Australian Centre of Photography (and still do go from time to time), The National Art School, UNSW and COFA and the ESE College. I even did a year at the School of Colour and Design (wonderful!). In Byron Bay I have done a few computer courses – Illustrator and DreamWeaver, plus screen printing, ink press. I have taken French classes all over ( I keep on trying!!), stand-up comedy, acting and singing! Then there are the online courses…

You know what? I am a workshop wizard. Permanently curious. Too busy to commit to full-time study. I just love discovering a new class, planning for it and anticipating what will happen. The light social interaction. The mentorship from the teacher. Of course, I love some more than others. Sometimes I discover that I am just not ‘into’ whatever it is I signed up for, and even that is a valuable lesson. Sometimes the class leads me to discover something entirely new about myself!

I will be in Sydney over Easter, and have been scouring the internet to find an interesting class I can go to while I am down there! Nothing has leaped up yet

What about you? Are you a ‘continued education’ junkie? What are your recommendations for me!