I had so much fun painting this one! Wild violets are such darling flowers. What a pleasure to see them pop up every spring.

For this piece, I wanted to keep exploring options for backgrounds. I started by drawing a violet field using colouring pencils.

The second part of the painting was the botanical painting of the violets and the butterfly. The butterfly is a Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly (Speyeria cybele). The caterpillars of this butterfly almost exclusively feed on violets, so it felt very appropriate to pair them together in this painting.

To bring everything together, I dove into some plant folklore and flower language to create the calligraphy part.

Finally, I assembled everything digitally.

If you like this piece, it is available in my Etsy shop! Every time you buy from me, you support my work as an independent artist.

And if you’d like to see a bit of behind the scene for this piece, it is in my February 2022 vlog.