In My Yard: "Painted Lady"

Woodcut
Black ink with hand coloring with watercolors
3" x 4" (image)
For sale here. 

This is the fifth in a series for a single sheet handmade book called In My Yard. This book will be submitted to the exhibition Ritual taking place in December in Philadelphia. 

This is my second print of one of the painted lady butterflies that graced our garden all summer long. (Here's the first.) I like the more dramatic, sunburst composition and bright color of this one. I played with the scale a bit and made the butterfly a little bigger relative to the flower, and I enjoy how its placement in the center makes it almost seem as if the flower pedals are an extension of the butterfly's body 

"Painted Lady Butterfly" (color)

Here's the hand-colored version of yesterday's print. Every time I do a black and white print and then hand color it I feel like it would be better if it was a color print with no or hardly any pure black in it. Something about it feels flat and kind of dirty. Right now I'm also working on a little 6 color reduction of a millipede. Will post that tomorrow.