I’m not happy with how this came out. But I did learn things, so that was useful.

This was the photo I started with. Every spring I tend the emergence cases for an annual butterfly exhibit – Butterflies in Bloom at Dow Gardens in Midland, Michigan – so I have no shortage of butterfly photos. I opened the image in Photoshop, changed the mode to grayscale, and in filters used stylize > trace contours. Then I printed it small enough to fit on the 9×12 canvas nine times.

The idea was that I would have nine blocks of color and each would have a butterfly on it. I thought it would be more interesting with the image rotated a quarter turn each time. I used black carbon paper to trace the design on the light squares in the middle row, and white transfer paper for the darker two rows.

Black carbon paper is kind of a pain because any pressure you apply smears carbon. I have to be prepared to clean off or paint over. Grrr.

Painting the nine color blocks took several stages of taping/painting/drying plus some touchups. The blue block pictured above is not as opaque as I would like, but I already sensed I would not be in love with this project and didn’t want to burn through acrylic paint unnecessarily, so I let it be.

Here is the final result:

I decided that for blocks 1/3/5/7/9 I would fill in the spots in the wings and trace the outlines, and for blocks 2/4/6/8 I would leave the spots open and fill in everything else.

My largest frustration was that the very small round brush I was using was too big for what I was attempting. Small details, occasionally clumpy paint, at least one poor color pairing. (Yes, I wrote down each color pairing to store with the painting for future reference.)

So, I have to use larger images of my butterfly friends. Got it. I can make adjustments for something I will be happier with.

How do you handle it when you’re working on something you just don’t think you’ll like? I stuck this one out to milk all the lessons I could from it, but it was a little dispiriting.