More Arizona Critters

Regal Horned Lizard

My photographer friend G. Vargas allowed me to use her beautiful shot of a mature, colorful Regal Horned Lizard as a reference. But I nearly gave up. I guess natural selection worked hard for millennia to make our little dragon cryptic, shadow-less and distort his shape, so who am I to give him his three-dimensionality back and make him stand out in a watercolor within a few hours....
For everybody who worries about the ants: no pogos were harmed in the making of the painting and no macro-photographer's copyright was infringed upon, the ants crawled out of my brain alone.