I was bitten by the artistic bug this week, so I spent a bunch of time illustrating.... ummm..... bugs. I've been interested in aquatic entomology for a very long time now, but dabbled pretty heavily in it this week. I felt like I was re-kindling an old flame.

Certainly not the sort of art that most folks would have any interest in displaying on the walls of their homes, but I think that insect life cycles are so incredibly interesting that I love looking at images of them. These three drawings represent different stages of life for a single species of caddisfly. Imagine what it would be like if people went through such vastly different changes of appearance over the course of our lives.

To me, damselflies are reminiscent of one thing; being in a canoe on a New England pond with a fly-rod at my feet, paddling slowly through lily-pads and looking for the tell-tale circular rings that emanate from the surface of the water where a black crappie or largemouth bass just rose. I cherish those summer evenings.

If you think this adult stonefly is ugly and frightening, you should see what they look like as youngsters. In their larval, aquatic stage of life, they are absolutely horrifying!!! I'm not joking. If stonefly nymphs walked the earth in larger bodies,... say 40 pounds or so, every living creature they approached would race away and have terrifyingly unmentionable nightmares about them. The stuff that "creature feature" films were spawned from.

I went trout fishing earlier this week for the first time of the season. Didn't manage to catch any fish, but my dog and I had a great time enjoying the sunshine and spring breeze... right up until the moment when I fell into the swiftly moving 38 degree water! At least I provided the older gentleman who was downstream from me with some entertainment. We laughed about it while I dried out.