A little art project I did in December for my vintage Victorian /oddities/miss Peregrine-esque living room decor. I want to hang fanart, but subtle fanart. I love illustrations of butterflies, and knew I wanted to have something like that amongst the gallery wall in a gilded frame.
As I began thinking of famous butterflies and moths in horror, I found that there are actually quite a few. The New England Corpse Moth isn’t exactly a “popular” option, but I included it to satisfy my own inner fangirl lol
1. Emily’s butterfly from The Corpse Bride
2. Death’s Head Moth from Silence of the Lambs
3. Ellie’s moth from The Last of Us Part 2
4. New England Corpse Moth from Wednesday
5. Queen Swallowtail from Crimson Peak
For the New England moth, there are no good photos of them so I went off of blurry stills from the last couple episodes to try to get the pattern as close as possible.
The queen swallowtail may or may not be what is actually in Crimson Peak, but after attempting to research it and cross referencing the butterflies in the movie to various types I found, they were the closest match. Butterfly enthusiasts please don’t come after me 🤣
I got a bunch of vintage odd shaped frames last summer from a garage sale and have been waiting for the perfect pieces to put in them. I made this one to fit this narrow girl frame. After sketching the butterflies in graphite, I aged the paper with thinned alcohol ink, a mixture of brown and yellow, thinned with rubbing alcohol and applied with a paint brush.
I considered using tea, coffee, or watercolors but I didn’t want the paper to warp. Alcohol inks evaporate quickly and when saturating the paper, the warping is minimal.
