It seems like beetles are everywhere now that I’m focused on them. Last week I attended an animated and informative lecture on beetles by Carl Olson, an entomologist from the University of Arizona. He brought his own collection of beetles, pictured above and below, and spoke about their enormous diversity. I was surprised to learn that Arizona has greater beetle diversity than any other US State. It’s easy to see why beetle collecting became such a fascination for Darwin as a young student

I was happy to discover a beetle in this collection called a Calligrapha beetle. It is a Leaf Beetle, which is the family Chrysomelidae. Sorry for the blurry image below, but it is so small that I needed a different lens. The Calligrapha beetle has mirror-image, ink-like markings on its back. A calligrapher’s beetle! This one will definitely make an appearance in The Illuminated Origin.

The table of contents of The Illuminated Origin of Species will be two full-size, 22x30-inch pages crawling with images of beetles. Thanks to Elaine Hultgren, master artist and teacher at the Desert Botanical Garden, I’m learning how to paint these amazing, colorful, iridescent gems. Here is an unfinished, early attempt at copying Elaine’s original example. It still needs work on the head and legs, but it gives an idea of the paintings I will be doing in the coming months.

In addition to making studies of many, many beetles for the table of contents, I’m preparing to make a second run at the sample page I made earlier this summer, shown here.

I’m doing this page over again because I’ve decided to make some changes that will affect the entire Illuminated Origin manuscript. For example, I will be changing the color of Fabriano paper I will use, the spacing of particular groups of letters and words, and the style of capital letter used to signify the beginning of each chapter and section. I’ve also decided to add...a beetle! I will be replacing the small cotton bud over the “IF” with an iridescent harlequin cotton beetle native to Australia. They can be pests for cotton growers, but they’re very beautiful. I can’t wait to paint it!

I have to admit that my new obsession with beetles has spilled over into my home life. Four-year-old Ben had a ladybug-themed birthday party this year. There was a ladybug cake, a giant ladybug balloon, and a big ladybug card, which was very fun to make. Maybe he’ll get hooked on beetles and help me find more of them to paint this fall!

More beetle blogs soon,