travel sketch

Oranjestad, Aruba-

The goal was to sketch my way through the southern Caribbean and so I share with you a series of posts which include sketches, though brief in detail, from each island.  Most of the time was spent on the beach (very similar to Anna Maria Island's exceptionally sugar-fine sand) but, there was time to sketch in Oranjestad.  It was in the shopping district that the children and I were lucky to find a treasure- a blue morpho butterfly specimen much like the one broken during the move from Florida to Virginia.  As many close to me know, the blue morpho is the subject of several paintings created since my adventures in Costa Rica years ago.  I will never forget my exhilarating hike though the cloudforest to a coffee farm when hundreds of migrating morphos surrounded me- the experience was not diminished by photographing it with poor equipment but they were carefully observed, absorbed and later described in watercolor. Since then, one of my and the children's favorite movies has become Lea Pool's film The Blue Butterfly-  inspired by a true story of a 10 year old boy diagnosed with a terminal illness whose final wish is to catch a blue morpho.  Highly recommended.