My favorite piece of art I’ve made is always subject to change, but for the past two years, Butterfly Queen has held that title. It’s one of those pieces that I look at and in my mind I’m like “HELL YEAH I MADE THAT”! I am just really proud of her and so I wanted to explain my thought process behind her.
So, Butterfly Queen is actually a redraw. I made the first drawing sometime around 2012-2013 and from basically the second I finished it, I was not happy with the results. The linework was way too thick, the color scheme was nothing spectacular, and the anatomy was very off. Granted, I am pretty sure I was still drawing with a screenless tablet at the time, and boy did that drawing setup give me a difficult time. Regardless though, even for the time it was not good at all. Ever since then the thought of remaking it had sat in the back of my mind.
But, it wasn’t until 2022 that I decided to redraw her. When starting her sketch, there were a few absolutes I had in mind: 1. She needs to give off a motherly and gentle vibe, 2. She needs to be naked, and 3. Her body needs to be a literal cocoon.
Requirement 3 provided a lot of direction for the pose; I wanted to use a forward-facing angle that left her open abdomen and cocoons within as visible as possible. I also wanted to keep the pose relatively compact with her limbs close to her body, to help further emphasize the cocoon concept. I posed her top pair of hands to be in a well-wishing, prayer-like manner. (She is not supposed to literally be praying, but viewers are certainly welcome to interpret her that way). Meanwhile, her bottom pair of hands are helping to hold her abdomen open and guide butterflies out. Her hair is definitely not as compact, as it is spread further out that any other part of the piece. My idea with her hair was that it would be like a shield, or basically another cocoon. And of course I couldn’t have it wrapped closely to her body without it covering up lots of details.
As far as the wings go, I used the pair on her face as a substitute for a crown. I didn’t want to use too much jewelry to detract from the “butterfly” part of Butterfly Queen, hence why the jewelry on her body is limited to her necklace, the arm bands, and her garters. I also chose to have the wings curl inward, toward her face to once again emphasize a theme of protectiveness (I made her lower pair of wings wrap around her legs for the same reason). Meanwhile, the middle pair of wings is unfurled simply because I didn’t want them to be curled in and cover her lower abdomen.
Now onto her skeleton. Whenever you’re drawing someone’s insides, there is ALWAYS going to be some degree of inaccuracy. There is too obscene an amount of musculature, ligaments, tendons, and other features to ever be captured in one illustration. I mean hell, even medical illustrators know this, as a key part of medical diagrams is omitting topically irrelevant structures and features. For example, diagrams of the heart often leave out the pericardial sac as 1. Including the entire sac would block one’s view of the heart and 2. Such diagrams often focus on describing the path of blood flow through the heart and including the sac does nothing to help explain this process. I’m getting off topic though. My point is, I didn’t include any organs, muscles, ligaments, or tendons because they were not important to the concept. I wanted to use her ribs as “branches” for cocoons to hang off and didn’t want anything blocking the view of them. As for her spine and pelvic bones, they weren’t necessary in the way that her ribs were. But I felt, well, if I drew her ribs, I ought to draw any other bones that would be visible.
Regarding her color scheme, that was the part of the drawing I planned the least. It wasn’t until after I finished the sketch that I looked up different butterflies to get inspiration. Eventually I happened upon the Queen Alexandria’s birdwing butterfly and ran with that. I tried to allocate the colors on her wings in a similar portion to how they are allocated on the actual butterfly’s wings. My biggest color-related decision would be deciding on what color her hair would be, as she has so much of it that it would essentially become the piece’s primary color.
I saved it for last and swapped through blue, green, and yellow ad nauseum; yellow was the first color to get ruled out. Using it as the primary color just did not match the vibe I was going for. (I did however choose to go with it for the harsh highlights as it provided a lot of warmth). Blue and green were honestly pretty close though; I liked green for its connotations of life and fertility and blue for its connotations of calm and serenity. Ultimately I went with blue as although the themes of life and fertility were important, the theme of peace was even more important. I really wanted to drive home that she is not only protecting her children, but is unquestionably confident in doing so. She has zero fear or concern of them coming to harm, she knows without a doubt that she will safely guard them until they emerge. This is also why her eyes are closed (I wanted to touch on this in the pose section but felt it would fit better her). She feels no need to watch for predators/attackers/other threats.
And I think that sums up my thought process behind her appearance. However, there’s one more bit I wanted to add. A lot of the time when I make drawings, there are one or two songs that I use as guiding musical themes. For this piece, the song “Heritors of Arcadia” by Takeru Kanazaki and Bonnie Gordon (from the soundtrack of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia) was a huge influence. It is full of endearment, warmth, and peacefulness, it perfectly embodies the feeling I wanted Butterfly Queen to give.
Granted, there are some disconnects between the song’s lyrics and my piece. Heritors of Arcadia is sung from the perspective of a character who is (spoilers) deceased by the end of the game. She talks some common talk, how even though she is gone, she is still present with those she holds dear (the human inhabitants of the country she was a goddess of). And although the queen is still very much alive in my piece, those lyrics do drive home a very common and poignant theme of motherhood as well as other close relationships: Even when someone is dead and gone and no longer physically present, they will forever be with you emotionally and sentimentally. I like to imagine that my queen would preach something similar to her children. My favorite (and most summative) lyrics from the song would have to be as follows:
“And though I am gone, just ash in the wind,
One life surrendered so yours can begin,
Courage, my children, this is your song.
I am the earth, I will make you strong.”
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