It must be Moth Weather

I had a few spare minutes yesterday before we went out for the day so I drew the outline of a moth onto some black card that I had been scribbling on trying out some white ink.  I then placed the cut out moth on top of the card and the card on top of an illustration of something I had saved to put in my sketchbook. Not sure where this is leading me too, but it is good to experiment and develop your ideas.

Progress on another little project is slow and last week I have managed to use my soldering iron to cut out hexagons of sheer fabrics to collage on top of the indigo dyed stitched pieces.  These are the leftovers above which I have adhered to a piece of fabric using the sticky powder you use to mend clothes. (It is like Bondaweb without the backing and the name eludes me at the moment) Thought my cut out black card moth looked like he needed feeding so popped him onto the fabric. Do moths like thistles?

This is the hexagon piece which I am really stuck on.  Handstitching is not working so shall have to resort to some machine embroidery first I think in a lighter coloured thread.

Not so Moth Eaten

I seem to have spent an awful lot of time messing about drawing this past week.  I may now use one or two of these images in some of my printing.

Moth Eaten Sketchbook

I was given a challenge recently to work in a sketchbook with black pages.  Whilst we had a break for Half Term I decided to concentrate on 'playing' in this wonderous journal with it's dark sheets full of opportunities … little did I know how hard it would be to come up with ideas.

I decided to develop the moth drawing I had been following since using the moth trap.

Markel oil stick stencilled moth, sketched moth, printed circle and punched circles revealing the page behind ….

More stencilled moths using both positive and negative images and the reverse of the same punched holes mentioned above.

Negative images sponged over and a cut out moth with a map pasted behind it.

Patterns from moth wings - holes punched through. The page folds up to show just one individual image.

Sketching Time

Trying very hard to draw moths from my photographs this week. Not happy with these sketches of the Poplar Hawkmoth but will persevere as I do get better the more I practice. Would love to just dive in with some colour, but a bad idea if I cannot get the actual light and shade correct in the first place. The ink version is only half completed and hope to find some time today to do a little more.

More Moth Catching

Can you believe this is the same moth

Then there was a Poplar Hawk Moth

plus 2 Brimstone Moths and a small Waved Umber

More Moth Trapping

Put the moth trap out again on Sunday evening and caught this beautiful fluffy moth.  I believe it is a Pale Tussock and is probably a female as it does not appear to have any orange-brown antennae which the moth book describes.  Apparently they used to damage hop crops in the past and had the nickname 'Hop-dog'.

There were also 4 of these in the trap. Cockchafer beetles or Maybugs.  This one is the male and the others appeared to be females as they did not have these splendid antennae.

There were 2 or 3 other moths in the trap but I have not been able to identify them as yet.

Moth Trapping

I have been very fortunate to have been loaned the use of a moth trap this week. An activity I have wanted to try for a long time.  Captured around a dozen different moths last night, including these ....

Purple Thorn?