Painting a Dragonfly

Summer Dragonfly (c) Mary Hubley

This beautiful blue dragonfly was sitting, resting on the grass reeds near my home. The dragonfly is such a sweet little insect, colorful, zen, and complex.

They're not easy to paint, as the wings are practially transparent, yet they have delicate structure that must be somehow captured. How to paint a dragonfly? Every artist uses a different technique.

I started my little dragonfly painting by doing a quick painted outline of the creature in my first paint layer, with thin paint. As I paint layers of color, my background emerges, and I use the background color to fill in the wings little by little, mixing a bit of white into the paint to make the wings a bit lighter so they look almost transparent. Once the rest is fairly dry, I finish my painting by using a small brush to draw suggestions of the intricate wing structure.

A suggestion of the structure is all that's needed, because painting the intricacy of each individual line would be too much detail, too realistic. I don't want to create a realistic painting; I go for impressionistic. My paintings concentrate on great shape, good compostion, and beautiful color. I also try to find shimmer and sizzle.

--Mary Hubley