Recently I have visited a butterfly farm in Stratford-Upon-Avon where I had an opportunity to take various photographs of butterflies. Here are some of the photographs I have taken:

These photographs will be very useful to help me progress my work, and start experimenting with different media and techniques to discover ways in which I could draw/paint the wings of butterflies. Also it allows me to think which butterflies would be most suitable along with my sky backgrounds,  as it is important that both the sky and the butterflies are similar toned, since I'm focusing how butterflies adapt to their environment through their colours.

I have already had a chance to work from some of the photos I have taken, helping me refine my work and style towards my final piece idea, I looked at some unusual ways of representing butterflies. Instead of drawing/painting etc. a grown colourful butterfly, I created a collage of pupa's  (immature form between larva and adult, when the insect is warped up in a cocoon) It is interesting to observe different forms of the same insect, as it takes us back to a different stage of their mostly short life cycle. Here is the work I produced: 

It was quite interesting and slightly challenging creating pupa's' in my work, as their texture and whole appearance requires different media to be used unlike when creating a grown up butterfly. Even though I think these experiments did work moderately well, I still prefer observing fully grown butterflies as they give me more ideas of how to draw/produce them.

Also I used some of the photographs from the butterfly farm to print them out on acetate, in order to go back through my previous work and see how various backgrounds make the butterflies look. Here are the most successful backgrounds:

Even though I consider these to have worked the best, I still think that the background is overtaking the butterflies, and they don't stand out as well so the viewers eyes loose attention of the butterflies. I think the best ways to make the butterflies look effective would be if the background was quite plain and simple not overdone or very bright, and then the butterflies would be full of detail colour and tone, but still working well and slightly blending with the colours of the background.