Common as… brown

The weeks are definitely odd at the moment. The weekend can seem like such a long time ago and, by Wednesday, my main thought is ‘how are we not on Friday yet?!’

Despite the pretty poor July weather, the main highlight of a typical weekend is a good ol’ countryside walk. And on this weekend just gone, our walk of choice was a 6.5 miler in the Cotswolds. 

While walking over the rolling fields and through the meadows, it was a joy to see the range of butterflies fluttering about. I know 2019 was a very good year for butterflies – particularly Painted Ladies – but I hadn’t seen quite as many this summer yet. And it was definitely the household favourites that first caught my eye: the red admirals with their bold black wings, the tortoiseshells with their beautiful shades of orange, and the peacocks with those striking ‘eyes’. Though perhaps not as colourful, the cabbage whites also grabbed my attention with their pure white wings contrasting perfectly with the greenery. 

There were lots of other species around too and I used to refer to many of these as just the ‘brown ones’. The meadow brown is one such butterfly. I reckon I must see at least one of these on pretty much every walk I do in summer. According to the Wildlife Trusts, the meadow brown is ‘one of our most common butterflies’ and it can be spotted pretty much everywhere between June and September – grassland, farmland, wetlands, woodlands, towns, gardens, on the coast. So you really could say that they’re common as, well… brown.

Coincidentally, I was advised recently to try and really look at things and, on this particular walk, that’s what I was daydreaming about as I put one foot in front of the other. When I say ‘really look’ I mean look properly. Look at where the light hits an object, the range of colours, where the shadows are and what shapes they create. So I thought about the poor, overlooked meadow brown and decided to make it the focus of a few pieces.

I also wanted to try out a few of the new art materials that I recently received for my birthday. I started with watercolour first. Now, I’m including this because I want to show an example of when art doesn’t go the way you want it to. I think it can be easy to think that people who share their art always come out with something that looks good. This just isn’t the case. I really wasn’t happy with the watercolour version – so much so that I just had to get a pen out and scribble lines over it to make it look better. So, what went wrong? Well, the watercolours are in paint tubes and I’ve never used these before. The colour is a lot bolder and I found watering the paint down to help it blend with other colours was a lot trickier. I’m really looking forward to trying again though and, ironically, the scanned version looks a lot better than the original – I’ll make a mental note of that!

I then used some materials that I’m much more comfortable with in order to really do the meadow brown justice: pencil and ink. While I was colouring the drawing in, I had a good look at the colours on the wings of this lil butterfly and found that there’s so much more there than ‘just brown’. There are oranges, reds, light browns, dark browns, greys, whites. They really are beautiful butterflies and I know I’ll never refer to a meadow brown again as ‘just another brown one’.

Finally, I brought out some soft pastels. One of my attempts at painting the meadow brown with pastels will never see the light of day. But the experience was enjoyable so I knew I needed to have another go.

I decided that, unlike my pencil and ink drawing, I didn’t want the butterfly to be the main event. Instead, I wanted to embed it within a landscape – a meadow at sunrise (or sunset?!) would do nicely. But I didn’t want it to be too hidden either. I wanted to strike a balance between its abundance and its beauty. And, although the meadow browns in this piece aren’t the main event, they do still draw the eye and it’s difficult to overlook them. I still need practice with pastels (and fixers!) but I was happy with this attempt.

So, what’s the moral of the story? Well, your first attempt with new art supplies is probably not gonna go great. Noted. It turns out a scan can save a piece. Win. And, more importantly, next time you spot something as common as the meadow brown, have a really close look. You might well see something you never expected!