A highly contrasted watercolour depicting a Caihong, a small feathered dinosaur, looking at a Kalligrammatid in a Sequoia tree while other Kalligrammatids fly around. The background is black and the foreground is lit sharply from behind, showing only silhouettes and transparent wings. Caihong is covered in bright blue and green feathers on its neck and head, while dimmer blue feathers dominate on its back and wings. The Kalligrammatid in the tree has large yellow-and grey wings that mimic the head of a maniraptoran dinosaur. They have a sharp dividing line resembling a mouth with teeth along their middle and a bright blue eyespot. A second member of the species is flapping around. Other Kalligrammatids are flying around too; several of them have eyespots. One of them instead has many smaller white spots amidst a dark area on the edge of its wings. Their wings are transparent and form the brightest parts of the image with their backlighting, only dimming where they are shaded by the insects' bodies or another wing behind them. Although their wings do resemble those of butterflies, they are clearly separate unlike those of butterflies, and the hindwings in particular are swept further backwards. The insects' bodies, although mostly only visible in silhouette, resemble those of other lacewings rather than butterflies.

In a dense Sequoia forest where the darkness is broken by only a single solarbeam, a Caihong curiously inspects a Kalligrammatid, seeing a face not unlike its own staring back from the strange insect’s transparent wings.

#Caihong #Kalligrammatidae #Paleoart #Jurassic #MyArt