Relaxing With The Caterpillars...

Humming-Bird Hawk Moth Caterpillar Mixed Media Sketch

Hello there

Hope you are thriving (and doing exactly the amount you do or don't want to do at the moment).

For my own part, I meant to do so much, and yet, somehow...

Here's the thing. This August feels so *pressured* for some reason. Maybe it's all self-imposed, or maybe you can relate?

Anyway, there were *so* many things I meant to do this week. To present to you, and to to help you with. (Yes, I see you, honestly, all the people to whom I've been promising more YouTube videos since forever...). 

And then there's that "tariff" word...

As you'll know if you've spent any time here, I do my very, very best to avoid politics here altogether. If you love happy and whimsical art, you're welcome here, and that's that.

But as the elephant has made its way into our actual room here, it feels like there's little choice but to say something.

To anyone worried about tariffs affecting their shopping for my designs, my best answer so far (after hours of searching, and-unsurprisingly-very little previous knowledge of international trade) goes like this: 

"Everyone's geographical situation is different, so my trying to say anything here (or even steer all my designs into one place) wouldn't help a bit, and might make things worse. Please just get to know what's best for you personally, wherever you are, and I'll do my very best to accommodate that if I can, in considering in which shops to place designs."

Luckily...

Luckily, online downloads remain easy to access wherever you are, as far as I know... (I'll be introducing new items to my Craftsuprint shop soon, for that very reason).

So, obviously...

So, obviously, the only thing to do in response to all this weirdness was... to hang out with the caterpillars. :-)

For context, we had had  a humming-bird hawk moth visit our window boxes a couple of weeks ago. She was verrry interested in a particular plant with "pinwheel" leaves that was growing rather rampantly in our box we dedicated to wild flowers a few years back.

(I say "was" growing rampantly, because six caterpillars make incredibly short work of an awful lot of leaves. Which, in our case, suited us just fine, and probably saved us a lengthy autumn tidying/weeding session :-).

And so it came about that our enticement to live in the moment once more has come, this week, from an insight into the not-so-tiny and voraciously-eating lives of six fat caterpillars. Who I strongly suspect may have been the inspiration for the Very Hungry Caterpillar young children's board book by the late, great, Eric Carle (Affiliate link proudly placed to leading to the book back there. Because who doesn't love a book that-as far as I remember- has pages  actually *designed* to look munched?)

Artistic License?

I'll keep you posted if we see anything progressing with these really now rather large creatures (1.5 inches each at least, and growing by the day).

In the meantime, in the interests of accuracy, I'll close with The Computer Man's photo of one of these beings, so that you can see that I have liberally used artistic license, in giving them extra and wider pink feet, and, um...eyes.

Hummingbird Hawk Moth Caterpillar
 (Photo by Jim Fernbank).

The funny thing is, despite everything going on in the world, a few minutes of "caterpillar watching", really *is* incredibly calming. Who knew?

And with that, I'll leave you to your day.

Thanks so very much for being here, *and* for reading down this far.

More soon.

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A New Floral Painting (And A Very, Very, New Option)

"Euphorbia River" Painting by Clare Walker
Available at Pixels.Com

Hello there

Hope all's well and happy for you.

Here, as you see, there's a lot that's new here. Firstly, the "Euphorbia River", above.

The story behind it

I have to give huge thanks to my friend and very-talented-photographer-in-her-own-right, Marilyn Doyle, that this painting ever even happened.

She shared tales of a happy afternoon. And I was so transfixed by her photograph:

Photo by Marilyn Doyle, used here
and as a reference with her permission.

that I immediately asked if I could use it as a reference...and found myself with a completed painting in an afternoon, pretty much, (if you come here often, you'll know how rare that is).

So, just enormous thanks to Marilyn for such an inspiring photo, and for the use of your photo here on the blog too. (I would link to her as well, but she doesn't have a website as far as I know).

I mention this all here because I really want Marilyn to get the credit she deserves. And because it's an unusual story behind the "Echinacea Euphorbia River" painting...And because I've already wondered whether these are echinacea (coneflower) or rudbeckia flowers...Or even something else...

Going on their cone shape, and the large prickly seedheads in the middle...I'm sticking with the Echinacea/Coneflowers. But the debate is on, if you want it to be...I'm about to start it on Instagram.

Update on Aug 9th: Have just remembered a great thing about the new shop for your browsing and buying pleasure ;-)...You can *comment* below images. Yay! If you have an idea about what these are, please comment here. Many thanks!

Update on August 10th 2025: Have just discovered that the original flowers may have been Euphorbias.
Really not sure what to do about this yet. Update on September 13th: The title of this painting is now..."Euphorbia River". You live and learn :-).

Hang on a minute. What about this new option thingy?

Ah yes, the new offerings via Pixels.Com/FineArtAmerica. Just in case you're thinking that I may have gone out of my mind to launch this idea on a Friday evening in August at the bottom of a post about something else... Well, yes, I might.

But this isn't false  modesty or anything. It's just the softest possible "launch" (those quotation marks are working particularly hard, there :-) ), so that I can keep everyone whose been such a support in the loop, whilst still being able to correct inevitable mistakes as we discover them.

There will be more on this, I promise. And with that, thanks as ever for reading this far, and for your support...and have a lovely weekend.

More soon.
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