Laura Mallaghan Illustration

 The sun has finally come out at the perfect time, for the bank holiday weekend! I have been wondering when will the sun come as the whole month of May has been unusually wet and chilly, then a drastically change this weekend, sun out and temperature rise. Wore from a jumper with thick bottom clothing to a flowy dress! Three weekends ago, on a rainy day, I was flicking through the Observer's Book of Butterflies, a yellow butterfly caught my eye, a Berger's Clouded Yellow Butterfly. The yellow wings made me think about warmth and the sun, yellow as bright as the sunshine!   I then got inspired to paint this yellow butterfly. Here's the process; And the Instagram reel of process in fast speed; View this post on Instagram A post shared by Laura Mallaghan Illustration (@lauramillustration) Now I'm going to sunbathe in the garden, absorbing the warmth and Vitamin D from the sun! 🌞 Have a lovely Bank Holiday today!

Hello you all. Let's start with a little bit of education if you're wondering what is Rhopalocera is?  Rhopalocera is a scientific name of the butterfly, a division of Lepidoptera consisting of the butterfly.  This scientific name Lepidoptera is an order that includes butterflies and moths, also it's a Greek name with lepis means a scale and pteron means a wing, basically an insect with scales on the wings. Additionally, the scientific name for moths is Heterocera. Furthermore, Papilionoidea is the superfamily of the butterfly, hence the genus Papilio is Latin for butterfly, that's another name that doesn't include moths. I like studying about butterflies with another name, the different varieties, watching them on flowers and mostly I'm fascinated by the wings. Anyway, back to art. This painting has four butterflies, all have colourful wings. The reason I titled this illustration 'The Four Rhopalocera of Colour' is that what does all these ...

The Milkweed butterfly, also in another name of the Monarch butterfly, inspired me when I watched BBC's Spy in the Wild Series 2 in February. In episode 2 "The North", in this scene located the mountain in West Mexico, with the Spy Hummingbird capturing the place that's considered the world's most beautiful natural gathering, where the Monarch butterflies hibernated during the winter. It was Spring, the Spy hummingbird flying around millions of butterflies resting on the oyamel fir trees (I just looked it up of what kind of tree because I can't remember what it was, hehe). When the sunshine on them, warmed their delicate wings, then started to fly. And when they fly, it was absolutely spectacular, all orange and flow through the trees. I imagined myself in there, underneath them and watching them as they migrate to North. I felt calm and delight thinking about it, it was awe-inspiring. Being called the Milkweed butterfly is because they feed on ...

This is The Darkest Butterflies illustrations, as the Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell.  The colours from these two butterfly kinds works well on the dark background as this gives some strong contrast. I used the colour pencils for the butterflies, scanned them then onto the photoshop, edited the contrast level to the lowest that gives those effect.  I then worked on the pattern designs, here are the designs; Then put these two butterflies together; I like the last ones, the circle pattern, it's looks like the mandala design. All of these illustrations will looks really lovely for desktop background. 😃