Black Swallowtail
In between meetings my sketchbook was at hand and so, one moment at a time, this page filled with studies in a black swallowtail butterfly that graced my garden with its presence today.
The sketchbook is not a camera, and I don’t feel a need to capture every detail. Rather, I aim to study a little bit at a time. The veins in the wings. The colors of the veins as the light shifts. Is it black, or is it purple, or blue? The segments of the abdomen, and how they bend. The difference between the velvet on the thorax and the satin on the abdomen.
Aristotle wrote a treatise “On the Parts of Animals.” It wound up creating entirely new fields of study in philosophy, history, and the sciences.
Today I am grateful for this butterfly, and I have paid my gratitude with attention. One part at a time.
