I’m currently writing a short story which includes a masked ball and a leaf insect, so I’ve been trying to draw a few costumes and bugs to imagine them better.  It’s amazing that evolution threw up an animal like this.  Here’s a real life one in a plastic tub, with somebody playing cards (I think) in the background.

I’ve made a couple of New Years Resolutions recently to learn to draw with pens, and maybe this will be the year I actually try to stick to it.  It’s only May, after all.  I think you need something like a hundred different coloured pens to do it properly, and the nibs of the lighter colours get painfully dirty if you run over onto the darker ones.  You can spoil them in a flash.  It sends me hurrying back to the good old 3B.  Anyway, here’s a drawing of a leaf insect, plus an attempt with pens to draw a mask with leaf insects in its crown.