Butterfly Transition – A work in progress

Butterfly – in progress art work by Selina Shapland

Two circles, watercolour pencils, green leaves and pink flowers

Adding four butterflies to the image – using a stamp

Traced butterflies with black ink pen

Here I started colouring each butterfly – I started with blue

I painted the second butterfly orange and warm yellow

I’ve been learning how to capture my artwork in progress using a new app which has been so much fun.

I plan to create more how-to skillshare courses (with much better audio now that I know how to do that) so I can share more of what I do as an artist and to help me to grow as an artist. I’ve taken a bit of time off over the last couple of years so I could focus on learning the basics of writing a fiction novel, and now it’s time to incorporate more art into my life.

This artwork is a work in progress. I had an urge to use water colour pencils and play with them. So last night, this image started to come together.

Below is a super short image capture video showing how I used water colour pencils and a paint brush with a dab of water to colour the butterflies. I’m pretty happy with the video as I am learning and this is my first attempt at making a time lapse of my artwork.

I am calling this artwork ‘Butterfly transition’ as it is a symbolic representation of the internal changes I am going through in my life. I am seeing the brightness in life again. Seeing colour and vibrancy in the world is important, especially as I have, at times in the last couple of years been through darker emotional times. To me, this work in progress is a representation of hope.

And that is what I absolutely love about art. It’s a way to show where I am at in relation to the world around me. When my artwork is finished, I will put up a new blog post and share it with you too.

In the meantime, happy creating and thanks for stopping by.