Longwing Zebra Butterfly

This beautiful butterfly is found in Mexico and Central America, as well as the Caribbean.  It's common in many of the countries we visited on our Panama Canal cruise.
The cruise had a lot of days at sea, and the cruise line did a fabulous job of offering a wide variety of activities for passengers.  I was delighted to discover they were offering watercolor painting classes. I was too late for the first class. They ran out of supplies by the time I got there, so I didn't actually do this butterfly on the ship.  The second day, I got there earlier and got supplies and the drawing from the day before.  The supplies included brushes, papers, and a set of 6 water color paints in tubes.  They were student grade paints and were disappointingly chalky.  But I enjoyed the classes, especially as the instructor had chosen to do things that we would actually see on the cruise. As an introvert, I try to attend group classes where I have to share and meet and talk with others.  I met lots of interesting people, many of whom were trying watercolor for the first time. It was fun seeing their impressions of trying something new.  Some people hated it and didn't come back after  the first class, but others said they would continue on after getting home.  I hope they do.  I wanted to redo some of these drawings with better quality paints.  For this one, I used my Inktense pencils because I wanted to get a really strong black. I hope to do some of the others in the near future.
By the way, there are two kinds of zebra butterflies - the longwing, and the swallowtail.