Atlas Moth Cape Buffalo 2020
By Carter Watkins
Seed Beads, Beeswax, on Cape Buffalo skull
The inspiration for this design comes from a couple sources, over a couple months, during a tumultuous global pandemic: A few months back my family and I piled into a rv and drove to Carlsbad New Mexico to have a memorial for my stepdad Joe. He died of cancer in April. In one of our family-bedside-conversations the week before he passed my sister asked him if there was anything he regretted not doing. Joe said that he always wished he’d gotten a tattoo like Steve McQueen’s in the movie Papillon. A butterfly tattoo on his chest. It was an unexpected answer, Joe didn’t have any tattoos. On our way to Carlsbad (Joe’s hometown) I stopped to deliver some commissioned skulls to a client in Midland and he gave me two cape buffalo skulls to use as canvases for my bead art. The first cape buffalo is a daytime scene with two butterflies (papillion) landing on an Aloe Vera bloom. The second cape buffalo is a night time scene- a large, lone atlas moth stretching its wings on a Night Blooming Cereus stalk, flanked by blooming and wilted flowers under a luminescent (literally glows in the dark) full moon.
Composition: Large Atlas moth surrounded by night blooming cereus flowers.
Glowing moon on the top of the skull.
Process sketches
Colored Pencil concept sketch
