Donate Life

Donate Life

9 x 12

Gouache

This is my donate life project where I painted flowers, and butterflies using gouache paint. I've always liked butterflies, the symbolization behind them, the different colors the wings can be, seeing them in general. In the past, I believe my donate life projects have gravitated to sceneries that involve a background of the sky and some type of foreground like water or grass so for this project I wanted to try something a little different. once I thought about the beauty of butterflies, I tried to come up with a quote that would link both the butterfly and organ and tissue donation together, which is where I came up with "let someone flutter and flourish, consider organ and tissue donation." When I think of butterflies, I also think of flowers and I knew they were something I wanted to add as well for more color. I started out by sketching the butterflies, and freehanded the flowers, thinking of ideas and painting them with no reference. At this point, I thought about my color scheme. The background was green, the flowers were pinks and purples, so for the butterflies, I still wanted them to be realistic colors but colors that also were pretty and matched well with the flower and the background. I looked through different images of butterfly species and found morpho butterflies which wings consisted of different shades of blue. Although this piece isn't heavily derailed, I am happy with the outcome. I knew going into this project, I was not going to go into full detail as I do with my other projects, in an attempt to try out a new style. If I would revise this project though, I might fix up the left butterfly and the back wing looks a little off, but otherwise, I am satisfied with my work.