Dead Leaf Butterfly

Orange oakleaf, Indian oakleaf, or Dead Leaf butterfly (Kallima inachus) has delicate beauty disguised in folded-wing camouflage. The idea was taken from a video with a single oakleaf butterfly occasionally flicking its wings open and closed.

Dead leaf butterfly .... watercolor in progress

Dead leaf butterfly - 10" x 14" watercolor on 140lb Arches hot pressed

It's the last day of June and I'm just now submitting my second entry for the June painting challenge on Facebook. The instructions are to paint every day and submit it, and the painting should be watercolor that is directly applied to the paper, which means no penciling or sketching in. Just painting on the white paper. Quite challenging. I lightly penciled in the outlines of the butterflies, and I still got the perspective wrong, but at least they are of uniform size.