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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋

@buglady.bsky.social
2K followers 1.5K following 4.1K posts

Illustrator/painter who loves bugs, bones, and cool rocks. Anti-fascist, anti-racist. No Crypto/NFT/AI, no clankers. She/her. Support my art by purchasing art, requesting a commission, or buying supplies: linktr.ee/christinehutson

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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
These books are so damned political. Vampire kings are like every other tyrant, and these could easily have been written post 2016 or post-COVID, considering how timely some of the issues are. Trump's in there, and so are his minions, just not by name. #guillermodeltoro #vampires #thestrain
A pile of paperback novels by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan: The Strain, The Fall, and The Night Eternal. The cover of the first book shows a pale worm coming out of (or digging into!) someone's eyeball while a medical-gloved hand holds the eyelids open. In the pupil of the eye you can see the thin crescent sun around a solar eclipse.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Poppy seed pods (probably red-orange California poppies, but uncertain of species/cultivar). #SciArt #SciArtSeptember
Watercolor illustration of a variety of six dried stems and seed pods from garden poppies. They're small oval pods with an intricate little cap on top of each. There are tiny holes along the sides of each pod right underneath the little caps, where the bitsy black seeds spill out (sort of like a salt shaker). The painting is on light gray paper, the pods and stems are soft shades of gray, brown, green, and tan, and I depicted the little seeds falling out of the pods (as they do) all over the paper underneath the dried stems. The signature is "Christine Hutson (C) 2026.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
A flowering tree under the moon....
Dimple watercolor painting of a twisted tree with opening flowers on the tips of the branches. The tree is made of distinct "pieces" of color, like irregularly shaped tiles, each piece ranging in color from dark earth tones at the bottom roots and phasing into brighter rainbow colors at the tops of the branches. There is a pink-red crescent moon in the sky, with a rayed, pink-red star nearby.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Getting into spooky season by rereading some of my fave vampire novels....
A pile of paperback novels by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan: The Strain, The Fall, and The Night Eternal. The cover of the first book shows a pale worm coming out of (or digging into!) someone's eyeball while a medical-gloved hand holds the eyelids open. In the pupil of the eye you can see the thin crescent sun around a solar eclipse.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I just received my little paint palette from @theartofsoil.bsky.social ! This is a lovely little set, I'll tell more in the ALT text, where I have room.
A photo shows a small rectangular wooden paint palette box with seven colors of paint in it. The paint box is made of dark brown walnut wood, and has two tiny neodymium magnets, one in each end, to adhere it to its wooden lid. The lid is near the palette, and has "the ART of SOIL" laser engraved into it. There is a tiny card that came with the set that reads "HALF DOME, Yosemite NP", and has colored circles on it representing the paints, with numbers and names for each color. The set is themed on a National Park here in the U.S., and Half Dome is a famous, large rock formation there. The paints are made from natural soils, because the owner of the paint company is also a soil scientist! She and her partner and her employees make these. The colors include a gray/black, a brown, a soft mauve, a soft pinkish brown, a rusty orange, a soft green, green, and a grayish blue. The paints are tiny dome shapes in the round holes that are carved into the wood, and there is an oblong groove in the wooden box meant to hold a short paintbrush, but this set didn't come with one (which is okay, because I have plenty of brushes). Near the paint box is the white cardboard box that it came in, which has "DIG IN!" printed on it, and there are cute illustrations all over the box of things like a tardigrade, some rubber boots, a mole (the animal), pencils, gloves, leaves, digging tools, lab coats, and many other items. I'm keeping this cardboard box, it's too cute to throw away! I've wanted some paint from this company for a long time, and finally went and bought a small set. So far, I love the colors, and the idea behind the entire enterprise. It's about sustainability, care for nature, and a love of art.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
From Cory Doctorow's book, by the way.....
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
This dude went out and blocked everyone who follows a certain other account that he has attacked, because he himself fucked up, and could not admit it or back down. Don't be like this guy. I'm too old to put up with such nonsense.
Screenshot showing that I was inexplicably blocked by Life of Sharks, for no reason other than that I followed someone who they hate (also for no reason). Childish nonsense.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
This unidentified item is 5" long, and no, Google can't tell you what it is (not accurately). Does anyone know? I'm serious, and yes, I have googled it (all answers were impossible or proven wrong). Asking for a serious ID.
A metal item with a seeming handle of hollow metal. Whole item is 5" long.  Springy handle, with two short prongs that are held tight inside of a non-removable metal ring. The ring can spin around when you squeeze the handle, which narrows the space between the prongs by maybe a millimeter. Nobidy knows what it is, not even Google or DuckDuckGo. "Answers" found so far have been AI slop or wild guesses.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Whew, I missed a few days!"Invertebrate", "Eye", "Whimsical", "Blue", "Small". #SciArt, for the land snail and the beetles.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
"Melancholy". This one sort of a stretch, but I don't do a lot of sad art (I paint monsters, but they don't seem to be sad or depressing, at least not to me). But this one is dark, so I'll go with it. Very Goth. One of my faves.
A watercolor illustration of a capital letter "M", but the M is mostly made up of a giant bat with a human-like body. The body of the bat forms the center "pillar" shape of the Lombardic-style medieval capital, and its wings spread out to each side to form the bow-shaped sides of the letter M. The bat has large, graceful ears that stand up, and it has malevolent eyes. Its tiny feet are formed along that central column of the letter, and rest on two ruby-red gems. Below that is a diamond shape that seems to stand out (it looks 3D), and then were are two more rubies below that, at the bottom of the central part of the M. Except for the ruby gems, the whole piece is done in shades of a dark, smoky blue-gray, on light blue-gray paper. The piece is signed "Christine Hutson 2024".
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
"Joy". I don't know how happy sharks are or not when they leap out of the water, but they sure look happy to me. This is a female great white, jumping out clear of her illuminated letter (the initial of both her names, genus and species). 🐡
Watercolor illustration of a female great white shark, leaping up out of a large, gold-colored letter "C". You can only see her white belly as she jumps up, her nose is in the air and her mouth is just a little bit open to show teeth, and she sort of looks as if she's smiling (I mean, jumping must be fun, right?). Her pectoral fins are straight out to each side and her tail is swishing a bit to the left as she curves to leap up. The inside area of the letter is colored greenish-blue, like seawater when seen in certain light, and white-capped waves of water are splashing out of the letter on all sides, as if her jump is moving the water. These sharks are known for hurling themselves out of the ocean like this, so I wanted to try to capture that here. The piece is signed "Christine Hutson 2022".
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
"Colorful", "Bone", and "Green": #SciArt, for the bone and cicada illustrations.
An illuminated (decorative) medieval-style capital B, rendered in bright blue and red lacework drawn with a fine pen, with geometric framing designs around it in the same colors. Lifesize watercolor illustration of a cow's vertebra (this was a found item from an old pasture, the cow seemed to have died out in the field). This is probably a thoracic vertebra, because it has a very long spinous process along the dorsal side. The illustration is showing the bone from a superior view (you are looking at it from the top) so that you can see the opening where the spinal cord goes into the vertebral foramen, etc. The most interesting part for me is the convoluted surface where the vertebra articulated with the next vertebra above it. This has of course lost its cartilage and connective tissue long ago, leaving a deeply grooved and rutted surface, which was a lot of fun to paint. The bone overall is very porous, having been left to weather outdoors, which adds to its visual interest. Fresh bone is usually quite smooth, and can even be shiny on the surface once all of the other tissue has been cleared away. This vertebra is portrayed at life size (LARGE), in realistic colors of ivory, beige, grey, and brown, with a soft shadow painted under it so that the vertebra seems to be sitting on a table or white surface. The painting is signed "Christine Hutson 2010". 

#SciArtWatercolor illustration of a green dog-day cicada (Neotibicen canicularis) at the center of a rectangular decorative design. The cicada is seen from the top, with its legs tucked in and not visible. Its wings are folded against the body. Around the cicada is a diamond-shaped field of medium green, with dark green vein-like roots pointing inward toward the insect at the center. Outside of this diamond shaped area are curling green-white branches that originate in the outer corners of the piece like four stylized trees, and they branch in toward the roots and the cicada. This piece presents the life cycle of cicadas in general. They live most of their lives and mature underground at the roots of trees, where they feed on the sap of the tree. Outside and above are branches representing the trees where the cicada will live out the last days of its life as a winged adult, singing away the summer until the cycle at the tree roots begins again. The piece is signed "Christine Hutson, '09". 

#SciArt
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
"Pattern". This piece is based on medieval illumination styles found mostly in antiphonary books (choir books), but also found elsewhere in manuscripts. It's usually done in blue and red, but I decided on using some purple-gray acrylic ink in a crowquill nib.
This one is difficult to describe. It's an example of medieval illumination drawn with only a pen, using bands of geometric designs nested within one another. The center is a small diamond/pyramid shape, shaded to look 3-D. There are three bands of patterns around that, in the same diamond shape but becoming larger and larger as each band moves outward, containing repeating patterns of leaves, arabesques, and the outer row  resembles a spiraling band (like a strand of DNA, actually) using shading to give a 3D effect. Around that is a band of tiny triangles nested inside of a border. There are circles with designs inside of them too, one in each of the four corners of the pattern. Again, so hard to describe, and language fails me in conveying what is going on here. Just nested strips that each contain a different repeating motif. The whole piece is drawn in purple-gray ink with a very fine pen nib, there are no other colors, just some shading here and there. The piece is signed "Christine Hutson 2018" in the corner.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
@andicomics.bsky.social , received my comic today, and thank you so much, I love it! #comics #zines #ripley #alien
The cover of a zine/comic by Andi Watson, "The Ship's Cat". The cover depicts a hand-drawn pen and ink image of a woman astronaut (who may or may not be a certain lead character from the movie "Alien") in a jumpsuit with lots of pockets, hands on hips and looking forward, standing inside a spaceship  passageway with her cat (who may or may not represent a certain orange cat from the same film) standing down by her feet, who is looking at something concerning out of frame. The cover is all in purple-magenta, black, and white, with pale blue-green accent color.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Missed a few days! "Orange", "Above", and "Below".
A realistic watercolor painting on white paper of a tangerine still on the stem, with leaves. The tangerine is bright orange with some soft highlights on it, and the stem still has green bark still clinging to it, and with four fresh green leaves still attached near the base of the fruit. The fruit and stem are lying sideways on a white surface, with a soft shadow painted underneath, to make it look as if it's sitting on a table. The piece is signed "Christine Hutson 2024" on the bottom. A friend of mine who had once been a Christian monk told me that this looked to him like a "throne", a type of major angel described in the Bible. I didn't intend it to be that, but if he thinks it is, then it is. 

It's a single, staring blue eye with an hourglass-shaped pupil in it.  above and below the eye are structures very much like ivory spiral horns, one pointing up and one pointing downward, and where they join to the eye there are ragged, cloth-like shreds of ivory tissue that fans out all around the eye.  Above and beside the ivory eyelid there are two wings spread out, painted in ivory and pale rose, . And all around the structure of these are ribbon-like strands that curl and twist and spread all around, painted in gray-blue and the same soft rose that shades the wings and the ivory parts of the eye. The piece is painted on white paper, and signed "Christine Hutson copyright 2011". An illustration on white paper of a gray and black skeleton key that is made to look like a demon. The demon face makes up the top/handle of the key, with horns on its head that poke outward to the sides, two slanting, glaring eyes, a narrow nose, and twisting, mustache-like tendrils that extend out from under the nose. The demon's fanged mouth is open, and the "tongue" that spills out forms the flanges of the actual key part, twisted metal that then splits to one side into forks that will open some lock, and then a bit of it extends below that to twist again. The image is all in black and gray, and behind and all around the image are sooty black smokey tendrils that crawl out around it, like living smoke or mist. This "smoke" was made with special paint that contains black magnetite (Daniel Smith Watercolor "Lunar Black" paint), which when wet clumps together into granulating clouds, and which I then manipulated by placing a strong magnet behind the image while the paint was wet. This allowed me to pull puddles of paint into tendrils and clumps without ever touching it with a brush. It really does look like sooty smoke on the page! The piece is signed "Christine Hutson 2024".

This piece was inspired by a key described in Richard Kadrey's "Sandman Slim" novels, where the protagonist has a key from Hell that opens doors between worlds.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
"Lovely". A painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) that I made for @kimthornton.bsky.social . One of my best butterfly illustrations ever, really. 🐡
Realistic watercolor illustration on paper of a painted lady butterfly with its wings spread out. It's hard to describe this butterfly, the patterns on the wings are complex! The overall color is orange, with bands of dark brown or black like tiger stripes in some areas, and white patches and spots, mainly in the front edges and bottom edges of the wings. The body is fluffy in front and smoother toward the abdomen, with long, graceful antennae with clubbed/rounded ends.  The piece is signed "Christine Hutson 2020".
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
"Eerie". This piece is silverpoint and metalpoint on black "Plike" paper. It's based on a Victorian tomb carving, but I altered it a bit. Sorry the background on the scan is smeary, but my scanner doesn't like black backgrounds and does very poorly with them.
A ghostly, grayish, misty-looking image of a winged skull on a black background. The front-facing skull doesn't look human though, the nose openings look like Gothic arches, and the maxilla (upper jaw) is ornate and has curlicues at the corners where it joins to the skull. There is no lower jaw. On each side of the skull is a bat-like wing, spread out, but there are short feathery bits at the base of each wing. Behind it are swirls of curling mist. This drawing is done with silverpoint and metalpoint on some velvety black paper called "Plike" marketed by Legion Paper). Silver and aluminum show up as soft, shining gray on black paper, but the paper has to have a surface that allows the metal to rub off on it, and Plike is perfect for this. It feels smooth to the touch, but the silver writes on it like a dream. The piece is signed "Christine Hutson  2021".
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Thank you so much! I learned this style of drybrush painting from studying Joris Hoefnagel's work, so I guess I have to blame it on him. Here's a close shot:
Detail view of the oak leaf illustration, showing that the image is made up of many tiny brushstrokes (so much work! Whew...).
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
"Dry". Here is a dried fall oak leaf with a colorful oak gall on it! Sort of looks like a little candy or gumball sitting there, doesn't it?
A realistic watercolor illustration of a brown, dried oak leaf that has a round, yellow oak gall on the upper surface of the leaf.  The round-lobed leaf is lying on white paper, and has a convex/upward curve to it, leaving a soft gray shadow painted underneath. Some of the tips of the lobes of the leaf are broken and split. The oak gall is yellow and round, with reddish brown spots all over it, like polka dots. 

Oak galls are caused by a tiny wasp which lays an egg on the plant, and the plant responds to this irritation by forming a gall, which is a swelling of growth that covers and contains the developing insect. The new wasp will emerge later, leaving a small hole in the gall. This type of gall is hollow, like a little paper balloon, but in some parts of the world oak galls can be solid and woody, like a hard nut, and some of those ones ("Aleppo" galls) can be used to create black dyes and inks that use the tannic acid and gallic acid in the tissue of the gall. Adding an iron compound to the ground up galls results in iron tannate, which is a permanent gray or black pigment (AKA "iron gall ink").

This piece is signed "Christine Hutson copyright 2005".
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
This is a hand-painted copy of a frog from the 16th century manuscript, the Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta (Model Book of Calligraphy) housed at the Getty Museum in LA. I added a bug from elsewhere in the manuscript, just for fun. The original frog is by Joris Hoefnagel.
An olive green and brown frog with rusty-colored legs is realistically illustrated in watercolor on creamy colored calfskin vellum. The frog is sitting down with his head up and pointed to the left side of the page, and his mouth is open to catch a flying insect that looks somewhat like a mayfly. The insect is painted in shades of gray. The work is signed "C. Hutson 2003". The frog and insect are very close copies (hand-painted) from a 16th century manuscript that depicts flowers, fruit, and animals in great detail. Copying images from this book is how I learned to do detailed illustration, actually, so I owe a lot to a Joris Hoefnagel, who died 400+ years ago.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I missed "red" yesterday:
Two lifesize red ladybugs painted in watercolor on a beige background, and the piece is signed "C. Hutson 2003". An old piece that I did years ago, but it's still cute.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Wing(s):
Watercolor illustration of a species of blue morpho butterfly, all in shades of cool blue, from light to dark (the butterfly's wings are actually iridescent, but I was not able to portray that effect here, I didn't know how at the time). There are black margins on the front of the forewings and on the back of the hindwings, and some white spots on the forewings' leading edge. The body of the butterfly is dark, painted in black with gray highlights. It is signed "Christine Hutson, copyright 2012", and this is the picture that I use as my Bluesky profile image.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Prompt for today: dark.
A lizard-like eye with scaly eyelids, painted in dark maroon, brown, and slate blue. The eye is edged in tatters of material that looks like dried parchment that falls into whisps as it trails away into a smokey background. The smokey clouds behind it are a watercolor wash of rusty brown, slate blue and grey, with shocks of black cloud. The iris of the eye itself is rusty maroon and gray-blue (rust on the bottom half, and blueish at the top), and it looks toward the left of the paper. Signed: Christine Hutson, 2024.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
The colors remind me of
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
"Tired", by Langston Hughes.

I am so tired of waiting, 
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two --
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Get. Out.The Vote.
"They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage goes up as the voting populace goes down." 
(Paul Weyrich, conservative political strategist). 

Got that? I don't know when the video clip was from, but we can find it. It's old. I saw this while watching "John Lewis: Good Trouble", a documentary over on Tubi.
This is why all the disenfranchisement, and they got really serious about it once we had a two-term Black president. For them, that was the end of the world as they knew it and they came out fighting. We have to do the same, but we have to defeat them with numbers. Overwhelming numbers at the ballot box. 

Get. Out. The. Vote.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
I mean...
Still shot from the video game, Squirrel With A Gun. In the image a grey squirrel is up in the air, holding onto a semi-automatic handgun that is just about bigger than he is, and he's got his paw on the trigger. Watch out!
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Fiber. Lots and lots of fiber...
Photo of a canister of Metamucil (TM) psyllium fiber supplement (laxative).
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some Zen to the feed
Photo of a male Andean Cock of the Rock, a bird with a bright orange head and shoulders, and a puffy crest of orange feathers on his forehead. His wings and back are a more neutral gray-brown, and his little eye is bright yellow and alert. He is perched on a long twisted tree limb inside of a naturalistic habitat in the U.S. National Aviary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sadly, there is a reflection off of the glass front of his enclosure, but the bird is still quite clear. One can also see his roommate, a Victoria Crowned Pigeon, which is on the ground near the orange boy. The pigeon is a beautiful slate blue-gray, with a spectacular crown of fine feathers on its head, like a fancy Mohawk haircut.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
A fantasy monster based on a cephalopod, but with bat wings on the sides. A watercolor illustration of a blue-gray octopoid creature with red eyes and a wrinkled brow, a trunk-like central arm on its face surrounded by nine other arms, and two sharp, hooked feeder tentacles spread out to each side. Sprouting from each side of its octopus-like "head" are bat-like wings in blue-gray, the edges tinted red. The painting is on beige paper over all, and the central image itself is surrounded by an outline that mimics dried, split parchment, with a shadow under the edge that makes it look as if it's a separate piece of paper on the actual paper. An optical illusion.  Illustration by Christine Hutson, 2018.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Horse(shoe crab) limb.....
Realistic watercolor illustration of a leg from a male horseshoe crab. This leg was found on a beach on the Atlantic coast of the U.S.. It's a dark brown arthropod limb with a smooth, hooked tip on the very end, overall flexed and bent almost like a letter Z, on a background of tan and light green mottled watercolor. By Christine Hutson, 2024.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Kinda a bunny, yes?
Faux scientific illustration of "Lepus cornutus", the antlered rabbit (jackalopes actually date back to medieval Europe, just as a side note). There is a central watercolor illustration of a brown and white rabbit, based on the American cotton-tail, but with small forked deer-like antlers on the front of its head, in front of the ears. He's sitting on a grassy area depicted in green. Around this painting are images/diagrams of the proposed skull of the rabbit, and a closeup view of one antler (this was based on a small shed antler I have from an American white-tailed deer). In calligraphy they are labelled "Skull of Lepus Cornutus, showing attachment of the antlers", and near the antler, "Antler from young rabbit". In calligraphy on the left I wrote "Painting and sketches by Christine L. Hutson" (me). The entire piece has a painted border around the edges made up of continuous small squares arranged like tiles in earth colors such as gray, shades of brown, tan, and cream. The piece was made on German paper called "Elephant Hide", a kind of smooth printing paper that roughly resembles white calfskin vellum. The date on this one is 2004.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
I made a loaf of Pullman bread! I used this recipe, and a Monfish loaf pan for 1lb of bread. www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/pain...
A loaf of bread sits in the pan, all golden brown with diagonal marks left over from the steel cover on the pan. This is Pullman bread, a type of dense bread that is baked inside of a heavy bread pan that has a lid that slides onto the top. The lid creates pressure inside the pan as the bread bakes and expands inside, and this is what makes the "crumb" (inside) of the bread so dense. This is a white bread made with potato flour and milk, great for toast, sandwiches, and most of all, French toast! The nonstick pan is made by Monfish, and the recipe was found at the King Arthur Flour website. 
According to Wikipedia, "European breadmakers began using square lidded pans in the early 19th century to minimize crust. Railway service pioneer George Pullman chose the loaf for use on his Pullman railcars for efficiency reasons."The finished loaf of bread, out of the pan. The entire surface is a uniform golden brown, with diagonal impressions all over it, left over from the texture of the pan. The loaf looks like a perfectly rectangular brick, with crisp edges all around. But it's a very tasty brick!
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
"There's a Lot More of Us...", from Life of Sharks.
Comic by Life of Sharks: Three beefy sharks are gathered together in the first frame. One says "We're great white sharks. We've got razor sharp teeth". Another says "Top of the food chain for millions of years", and the third says "So what you gonna do about it?"

Second frame shows the three sharks together at the top, with an exclamation mark of surprise next to them as all of the sea life (baleen whale, orca, octopus, eels, squids, jellyfish, and countless others in a mass) reply to the sharks "There's a lot more of us and you can't eat us all".

Yes. There are indeed a lot more of us, and they cannot eat us all. Especially when we stand together (no disrespect to actual great white sharks, which are totally awesome).
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
How about a watercolor illustration of a kestrel feather? Done from a photo of one that dropped in a friend's driveway....
Watercolor painting of a wing feather from a kestrel. The feather is cream and white, and a soft rust color, banded with dark sepia bars (stripes). The tip of the feather is sepia/dark brown.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 28/12/2025
Woman demonstrating the "scorpion" yoga posture. She is on a mat, standing only on her bent forearms. Her body is curved backward up in the air, her back bent until her feet dangle above her head. It's kinda hard for me to describe. And no, I can't do it.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Also me: "Come and take them!" ⚔️
A photo of hundreds of colored pencils of various brands and shades in a box, some held together in groups by black rubber bands/elastics.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
This guy, my trusty steed (at Cleveland Museum, I think):
Photo of a smiling woman with long hair, sitting side-saddle on the back of a giant model of a rhino beetle, in a museum display.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
I just blocked this account, @vitruviuspike.bsky.social
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
I'll see your pecan pie and raise you:
A baker holds a freshly baked pie, consisting of a golden top crust with four baked mackerel heads poking out, staring up at the sky. This is English stargazey pie, a medieval tradition that is still enjoyed today.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
A movie that takes place where you're from:
Poster for the movie, Six Ways to Sunday. It depicts 4 characters played by Isaac Hayes, Debbie Harry, Adrien Brody, and Norman Reedus.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Art vs artist...
A small color illustration of a xenomorph egg (dark green), a facehugger (pinkish tan), and an adult xenomorph (gray and gray-blue), all depicted standing in profile against a gray, rocky, mountainous landscape. This is a very stylized, Renaissance-style natural history painting in watercolor, in the manner of Joris Hoefnagel (16th century artist). The illustration is inside of an oval-shaped area on a white, rectangular piece of paper, sitting on a drafting table.A woman with graying blonde hair and glasses is hugging a small baby goat to her face, hiding the lower part of her face. The woman has silver rings on her hand, and a tattoo of a mayfly on her forearm. The little goat has perky ears, is brown and white, with spots of brown on the white areas, and is looking off to the side in contemplation of....lunch, maybe? There are green trees behind her and a barn in the distant background. Don't worry about the goat kid, she will grow up to be a pet, not a dinner! Though I am definitely sniffing that baby goat, because they smell sweet,  like fresh grass and milk.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
Land snail, unidentified species from western Pennsylvania, U.S.A. This is watercolor on goat parchment.
My detailed watercolor illustration of a land snail, painted on cream-colored goatskin parchment (the pores/follicles of the parchment are visible, which is typical of goat skin). The snail has a pink-gray body, and is out of its shell with all antennae extended, just going along from left to right on the page. The shell is a flattened spiral, golden brown with dark brown banding. The shell is not smooth and shiny, but rather has a corrugated texture, but very fine. There are pale yellowish veins visible through the translucent shell, which were identified by a malacologist (that is, not me) as being the kidneys of the snail. There is a soft gray shadow depicted under the snail, to suggest that it is moving across the page realistically.  Signed by Christine Hutson, 2009.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Well, today I tried stargazey pie. I really liked it (note: I did NOT eat a zombie mackerel head though). Anyway, a friend of mine made it, and it was delicious!
A stargazey pie! This is a pastry pie shell filled with a thick fish stew (or similar), and four actual mackerel heads are posed poking up out of the top crust of the pie. They have blank, empty, staring eyes. One of them appears to have glowing eyes. These fish have seen things.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
I really can't recommend this book strongly enough. It's about abolition. Abolition of slavery, prison abolition, all of it. I guess I'd say it's a fable, or a parable. It's deeply sad and it's beautiful and it's hopeful.
The cover of the book "The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain", a book by Sofia Samatar. The cover shows five shining, round blue rings interlinked together, glowing on a black background of space and stars.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Yesterday was comics day. Great stuff! I especially like the last story in the Predator comic, the last in the series of four. #Predator #Yautja #Hellboy #scifi #comics
Two comic books on a desk. One is a Darkhorse title, "Captain Henry and the Graveyard of Time", which is Hellboy-adjacent. And the other is "Predator: Black, White & Blood" #4, which is an anthology series of short stories. The second bookd has a cover all in black, white and red, and the cover of the Darkhorse comic has a very steampunk themed cover depicting clocks, a polar bear, a broken and desolate landscape, a man's face, and in the center is a man in a bulky diving suit with a glass helmet, connected to an umbilical cable, floating in the air. The art is by Mike Mignola, with his signature style. 

The predator cover shows a predator (youtja) drawn in gray and white, crouching on a large, gray, moss-draped tree branch, with his hands dripping in red blood and his helm spattered in red. The background/sky color is red, darker at the top of the page and fading to a lighter tint toward the bottom.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
I'm at a Goth-themed night market in Pittsburgh. They do this twice a year and it's always a great time. Waiting to eat Tansylvania chimney cakes...
Flier for a Goth night market in the Allentown neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. Entertainment, food, and vendor venues are listed on the vintage-style flier, including a drag show, some DJ's, and other live music.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Just a spicy little gal who clearly has plans. (Yes, we are boycotting Disney and its subsidiaries, but I have seen what I have seen, and darn it, I intend to have fun with these creatures on my own).
A watercolor painting on light gray paper, lying on a drafting table next to paintbrushes and cakes of watercolor paint. The illustration is of the extraterrestrial "eye midge" from Alien:Earth. This creature is a slightly oval eyeball, but with several irises and pupils ringed around the "equator" the eye. Extended from the bottom of the eye are seven pink tendrils with black tips, and one tendril in the center of the mass. There is some light smoky gray smudged here and there around the tendrils (mostly because I made a mistake with gray paint, and smudged it on my art, and I hid it by placing more gray all around. It looks nicer this way!).
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
But also:
Colorful medieval illustration of a part-cat, part-snail. Gray cat is coming out of its patterned orange snail shell.
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BugLady 🎨🌿🦋 @buglady.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Oh yes, I intend to save some to have made into jewelry, this is gorgeous stuff! There is almost zero calcite in this, it's the purest I have ever seen. He bought it to make into artists' pigment, but I could not bear to powder all of it up. No way.
Six large, irregular pieces of very dark blue stone sit on a countertop. This is gem-quality lapis lazuli, which has been dipped in water to show its intense color. Nearby is a tin full of more blue rocks.
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