Art by Mindy Lighthipe,Swallowtail butterflies are in the United States as well as in Central America. The Polydamus Butterfly is in the Swallowtail family and is found in Florida as well as in Central America. It feeds on the very peculiar plant family of pipevines. The plant depicted here has a flower the size of a baseball glove, thus the latin name- gigantea. The flowers act as a trap for unsuspecting small insects which fly into the "mouth" of the flower, travel down the throat of the flower and then are trapped at the bottom of the chamber. Here they are dissolved into the plants membrane. Once the flower is dead, a huge seed pod is formed which splits open spraying the seeds to the ground. Once the seeds germinate more shoots will climb in a profusion of intermingling vines. The female Polydamus lays her eggs on this plant and the caterpillars eat the leaves as well as the flowers. The caterpillar pupates and uses a thin filament or support to attach itself to a stem. The chrysalis looks like a twig or a rock climber attaching himself to the side of a cliff!
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I am happy to announce my new online Wonderful World of Watercolor Class will start this fall on September 21, 2016. I want to thank all my fellow artists for the overwhelming success of my Foundation Drawing and Drawing Plants classes. For the past year I have had requests from all corners of the world asking me to do more online classes. I spent May, June and July designing, painting, shooting and editing this new 12 week class in response to YOUR REQUESTS! It takes me a long time to do this because….. I do it all! …….. Drawing the Beauty of Nature!
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Study With Mindy in Beautiful Costa Rica
March 8th-17th 2017
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