Celebrating Pollinators During Pollinator Week

Jun 27

Last week was Pollinator Week, to raise awareness of the importance of pollinators for the environment. It encourages people to grow plants that attract the butterflies, birds, wasps, and bees as numbers dwindle due to climate change and a lack of conscious effort to protect the environment. One of my favorite things to draw is butterflies! As Jared continues to add native plants and unique flowers to his garden, we see more and more activity from pollinators.

Nature-Inspired Illustration

Nature is one of the best, if not the best, sources of inspiration for art and design. I love taking pictures of the plants and insects to incorporate in my work.

I am slowly documenting and illustrating all the butterflies I see in our garden and our travels.

In my first collection of butterflies, I drew the Monarch (my favorite), the Pearl Crescent, Pipevine Swallowtail, Gulf Fritillary, and some other small brown butterflies.

This year, I added a few more Swallowtails we continue to see on our plants, and a couple monarchs that we raised from larva.

I saw the Zebra Swallowtail for the first time last year! It has such a beautiful wingspan and unique coloring.

This is one of the Monarch butterflies we reared this year before we released it.

I caught this Giant Swallowtail making a landing on the zinnia in a unique mid-flight position!

With vector illustration, it is easy to create different elements and add them together. The milkweed plant below is a motif in my Asclepius Tuberosa Pattern Collection that I pulled to show how the Zebra Swallowtail like to pollinate it, even though it is not their host plant.

The butterflies are attracted to many different plants and flowers.

The Monarchs love the Asters. We watched a couple of them fly around the giant Aster plant we had one September for a couple hours!

All the butterflies love the zinnias! We plant them every year and they are one of my favorites.

Patterns with Butterflies

I always love a pattern! Butterflies in the Garden is a new pattern I created this year to document the ones we see regularly. The Monarchs in Flight Pattern is a part of my Asclepius Tuberosa Pattern Collection, which is available for art licensing and can also be found in my Society6 Shop. I created a similar pattern for the Zebra Swallowtail and Giant Swallowtail this year.