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Horse Lubber Grasshopper

Horse Lubber Grasshopper line art illustration (click image to enlarge)

Horse Lubber Grasshopper full color illustration (click image to enlarge)

Artist's notes:

The Horse Lubber Grasshopper was completed on 11.14.2011. I recall chasing grasshoppers in my native Minnesota - although they were only a couple inches long. This grasshopper is much, much larger. It can be a challenge creating a drawing of mostly black animal with stipple, as obviously creating large blocks of black one dot at a time is time consuming. But when I began to break this image down turned out there was less black than I had originally thought. I'm happy with the result. The drawing is based on a photo by Dave Beaudette.

Information about the Horse Lubber Grasshopper:

The Horse Lubber Grasshopper is one of the largest species of grasshopper in North America. It is native to the arid brush and grassland regions of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. They generally grow to about (7 cm) and weigh about (9 grams.) This invertebrate feeds on foliage, flowers and seeds of some of the more common summer annuals. Interestingly, it does not usually feed on the plants it roosts on. Unlike other grasshopper species, they do not mass in large number except when the are young, shortly after emerging from their eggs. These grasshoppers are usually flightless and fairly sluggish. They can defend themselves chemically, but can also move resources to grown wings instead.