Ledgebay does not sell a stock butterfly design. If you want a butterfly on a numbered canvas, the route is a custom kit made from your own photograph. If what you are really after is a garden on the wall, there are six floral designs and they are among the easier kits in the range. Both are covered below, along with the thing that makes butterfly wings genuinely difficult to paint.
Why butterfly wings are harder than they look
Two reasons, and they are worth knowing whichever route you take.
Symmetry is unforgiving. A butterfly with its wings open is nearly a mirror image of itself, and the eye catches any discrepancy immediately. A spot that is slightly larger on one side reads as a mistake, where the same variation in a flower reads as nature. On a numbered canvas this is already resolved for you, because the printing is symmetrical. Freehand, it is the whole job.
Some butterfly color is not pigment at all. The blue of a morpho, and the iridescent sheen on many wings, comes from microscopic structures on the scales that scatter light rather than from any blue pigment. That is why the color shifts as the insect turns, and it is why a flat patch of blue paint never quite looks like the photograph. The way to suggest it is with a value shift rather than a color shift: keep the hue and lighten sharply where the light catches.
One correction while we are here, since the previous version of this page had it wrong. Butterflies do not make cocoons. A butterfly forms a chrysalis, a hardened case that is part of the insect itself. Cocoons are spun from silk, and they are a moth thing.
Getting a butterfly on canvas: the custom route
A custom paint by numbers kit takes a photograph you send in and returns it as a printed canvas with every section numbered and a matching set of paints. Sizes are 12x16, 16x20 and 18x24, framed or unframed, and it is printed in the USA rather than drop-shipped from overseas.
For a butterfly specifically:
- Get close and go big. A butterfly is small. In a wide garden photograph it becomes a handful of tiny sections. Crop hard before you send, and take the 16x20 or 18x24.
- Wings open, side lit. A photograph taken with the light across the wings rather than straight on gives the pattern something to sit in.
- Simple background. A busy hedge behind the insect competes with it. A plain leaf or a blurred background converts far better.
The florals that do exist
There are six designs in the flowers collection, four of them Judy Buswell watercolors. Ritas Pansies, above, is pots of pansies on a garden cart. Sweet Petunias is petunias spilling out of terracotta. October is autumn flowers arranged in vases. Cosmos From the Garden is pink cosmos with fruit on a table. Apple Harvest is baskets of apples. Hummingbird is a hummingbird among morning glories, which is the closest the catalog gets to an insect-and-flower picture.
Florals are a good place to start for a real reason rather than a marketing one: petals are broad, curved and forgiving. A slightly wobbly petal edge still looks like a petal. Sweet Petunias is the exception and is genuinely demanding, because there are a great many small blooms crossing over each other.
What is actually in a kit
- Pre-printed cotton canvas, rolled in a tube rather than folded, so there are no creases to flatten
- Acrylic paints, vacuum-sealed so they arrive moist
- Brushes in a range of sizes
- Printed instructions and an 11x17 printout of the design
- Framed sizes also include a wooden tabletop easel
A note on the previous version of this page: it claimed a five-year-old could finish a kit in a few hours. That is not true of these kits, which are made for adults and take somewhere between ten and twenty-five hours depending on the design. There is no children's range here.
Painting one well
Wipe the canvas with a barely damp cloth first if it has any dust on it, and let it dry. Work from the largest sections down to the smallest, and from the top of the canvas downward so your hand is not resting on wet paint. Do one color at a time across the whole canvas before rinsing the brush.
Light colors often need a second coat to cover the printed number underneath, which is normal. Let the first coat dry first. If a pot has thickened, a drop of water and a stir usually brings it back, and there is a matching extra paint set for every design if a heavily used color runs low.
Good light beside the canvas does more for the fine sections than anything else. Use the 11x17 printout rather than leaning over the canvas to read a number.
On symbolism
Butterflies carry meanings of transformation and renewal in a great many cultures, and in several East Asian traditions they are associated with departed souls. That is a real and old association, and it is a reasonable part of why people want one on a wall, particularly as a memorial piece. It is also worth being plain that a butterfly is not a sign or a message. Paint one because you find it beautiful, which is reason enough.
Finished canvases from other customers are in the customer gallery, and the beginner's guide covers the mechanics if this would be your first.
