Artwork Description:

Title: Green Scarab 2

This shows the underside of the green scarab beetle and all the intricate details of the legs and abdomen. This specimen is part of the Hope Entomology collection at The University of Oxford Museum of Natural History.

Scarabs are stout-bodied beetles, many with bright metallic colours, measuring between 1.5 and 160 millimetres. They have distinctive, clubbed antennae composed of plates called lamellae that can be compressed into a ball or fanned out like leaves to sense odours.

Watercolour and gouache on board

Artist Bio:

I am a Derbyshire-based, artist/illustrator and art tutor.

I have a degree in textile design, and a masters from Central St Martins in Communication Design/Illustration.

My inspirations include natural history, explorers and naturalists, Hitchcock films, kitchen sink dramas, ghosts & haunted houses  and Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier novels.

I am currently working on a series of Shackleton illustrations which evoke the foreboding atmosphere and historic accounts of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition, as well as developing an idea for a graphic novel inspired by Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.