This is the second of my "Somewhere over the Rainbow" series, and I've done things the other way round to how I normally create - firstly I punch-cut lots of butterflies from heavy watercolour paper and arranged/attached them in undulated lines diagonally across a sheet of the same paper. So that was my blank canvas to start my painting rather than painting first and cutting my butterflies from the painting.
I then painted the rainbow colours onto the butterflies with watercolours and also splattered the colours so that the paint reached the background paper. I've added metallic gold watercolour to all of the large butterfies so that they catch the light and are also symbolic of "Light at the end of the tunnel" and "Gold at the end of the rainbow".
The result is a very colourful modern textured relief design revealing individual butterflies on closer inspection, with different shadows cast, and reflecting metallic gold watercolour from the up-turned wings depending on the direction of the light.
