Monday 16 June 2014

Anacamptis papilionacea - the Mediterranean Butterfly Orchid

During spring time I was surprised by the large variety of orchids that I was meeting at each step in our village (Kampi Village, Zakynthos Island, Greece), all of them so beautiful and delicate! I got many photos, but it was like never the light was the best, or the location of the little flower, etc. I think this will go into a small series of paintings of orchids from Kampi, and it will not finish very soon as I need to do some field studies for each species. However, here it is the first "portrait" of the so called Butterfly Orchid, although there are many species around the world with this common name. The actual species is Anacamptis papilionacea (syn Orchis papilionacea), and it might be the sub-species Heroica as it has quite big white "wings", but I am not sure about it. The painting has a size of approximately 10x10 inches, and it is done with W&N and Daniel Smith watercolors on Waterford 140lb Rough paper.

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