American Tear Notes

— Additional Information and Images —

To the left, at the top–left side of the image, is the first draft of the American Tear butterfly. It took three days of work to get from that top-left image to the bottom–right image, which is the first finished version of the American Tear butterfly.

The American Tear Butterfly is not actually modeled after any single, real, butterfly, although I did study two different, real, butterflies for different anatomical aspects of their wings and bodies. I only loosely used the anatomical aspects that I observed from those real butterflies to make my imaginary butterfly though.

The two butterflies I studied to shape my imaginary butterfly were the Ornithoptera Croesus and the Papilio Ascalaphus. No, neither of these butterflies are native to North America, but most of the people of North America are not native to North America either. America is made up of people from many parts of the globe, including Southeastern Asia.

Another influencing factor in my decision to study Southeasterm Asian butterflies, for the making of the American Tear butterfly, is that I had, at that time, a strong romantic interests for Lilies, a Chinese–Indonesian woman.

I feel though, that since this butterfly was not made in Indonesia, or the Philippines, but right here in the United States of America, and it only has Southeaster Asian influences, this is indeed an American butterfly, even if just an imaginary American butterfly.

The butterfly to the right is the blue version of the 2015 revised American Tear Butterfly. This American Blue Tear Butterfly could have used at least one more day of refinement work, but I ran out of time and need to move on to the next art project now. The red version, near the top of this page, could have used one more day of refinement work as well.

Michael A. Crane, Jr.
Artist/Webmaster/Writer