#ground beetle

Notch-mouthed Ground Beetle Dicaelus purpuratus

A ground beetle found in eastern North America.

Rainbow Ground Beetle (Physodera eschscholtzii), family Carabidae, found in SE Asia

I've been reusing a lot of materials from my old crafts lately. It's a nice way to "declutter" in a way, without having to fully part with them.

࿐༄ ⚘ 𓆣 ⍋ 𓆣 ❀ 𓆣 ⚘ 𓆣 ⍋ 𓆣 ❀ ࿐༄

This was initially a concept with some very old characters from 2018. It was a quartet of Polistes dominula featuring the dominant foundress RoadBlock, Mutt and Muss (the bullies), and Lepidolite (originally named Crystal) who has a blank face, which in theory, ranks her as a subordinate. One thing led to another, and thus, the "get back to work" cartoon was born. The original drawing didn't have coffee mugs, or a crown over the foundress' head, but I figured adding these items would in turn make the final product more humorous. 2018 is bittersweet for me, as I had a mental health crisis that year. I don't miss the mental turmoil, but I do have a few memories of some artwork that I created back then, this being one of them.

Over the years, I've come up with several characters, named them, but never actually incorporated them into an actual story, other than a couple of random scenarios.

A friend and I have been brainstorming for a few years about a story incorporating an erythristic grasshopper being bullied for her differing appearance. Along the way, she meets and bonds with other fellow hexapods with unique quirks/physical abnormalities, and develops a long-lasting friendship with them. There's the main character who is an erythristic grasshopper, an orange-belted bumblebee with deformed wing virus, a yellowjacket with a developmental anomaly, a stink bug with a mutated antenna (in the sketch, it's completely missing, but that will change), a ground beetle with a bifurcation on his front right leg, and last but not least, a gynandromorph black swallowtail. I'm struggling to come up with a deeper storyline and plot. A lot of adult insects don't live for very long, usually one season, so I feel like the topic of death would be too dark, especially if this story is also aimed at a younger audience. I welcome ideas if anyone can share some insight. I don't plan for this to be lengthy, it's a short story, so if published into a book, there'd be something like 20 pages max.

Whoa they look wild!

sticker sheet reward for patreon this month (hammerhead and whale shark tiers!)