National Insect Week

June 25th – July 1st 2012 is National Insect Week. I have been busy drawing and painting a variety of insects that can be found in the area around my home in Sussex. I have also been researching insects on the Internet and have come up with an interesting insect fact for each day of the week:

• Insects are the largest group of all living things.
• There are more than 900,000 known species of insect in the world.

• There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are people on the whole planet.
• The blood of insects is yellow.
• The largest moth is the Atlas moth which has a wingspan of 30cm.
• Queen ants live to be about 50 years old.
• Dragonflies can fly up to speeds of 60 m.p.h.

The images on this page show several of my insect pictures on antiquarian book pages.