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Monarch Caterpillar

Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar line art illustration (click image to enlarge)

Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar full color illustration (click image to enlarge)

Artist's notes:

The Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar was completed on April 17th, 2009. I really love caterpillars, although I don't see the big ones like the monarch very often. I do recall occasionally coming across these cool looking caterpillars on milkweed plants in the meadows of northern Minnesota. This was a really fun drawing to create and I love the 3D feeling I was able to capture. The drawing is based on a photo by Bob Lepak.

Information about the Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar:

When a Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar is born it is only about 1/8 of an inch long. Due to it's voracious appetite it grows very quickly, first eating it's shell then it will begin to feed on milkweed. For the first days of it's life it will eat nonstop pausing only briefly to rest. It will consume it's on body weight time and time again during this stage. When it is full grown the caterpillar reaches about 2 inches long. When it is ready to pupate it will look for a safe location to weave a small silk attachment to the underside of a branch or leaf. There it will enter the pupae stage shedding it's skin several times, then it will become a chrysalis before the butterfly emerges a couple weeks later.