A little sketchbook is just the right size for sketching little subjects. Drawn in graphite, a cicada molt (right) and a hickory nut (left) each get their own page.
After having grown too large for its skin, a cicada secured itself to a vertical surface and began the process of shedding its tight exoskeleton, emerging with a new exoskeleton of a more comfortable size and transitioning from nymph to adult. The cicada proceeded to move on with its life, leaving behind a tan hollow shell that maintained its cicada-like form.
When I stumbled upon this familiar shape during a walk, I quickly got out my little sketchbook that is perfect for sketching little subjects. In graphite, I drew the contours of the molt, including the pointed appendages, large eyes, and the crack on the thorax from where the insect had emerged. Not included in this sketch is a tiny dot of a spider and its web that was attached to the discarded exoskeleton, which had been serving as a useful support.
A discarded exoskeleton that belonged to a cicada was still clinging to a vertical surface when I found it. A spider was using the empty molt as support for its web.
Another day found me out and about inspecting the ground underneath hickory trees. I was looking for hickory nuts, and I could not help but also notice and admire such peculiar spiders in all shapes and sizes and their glimmering webs. While navigating through these delicate, sticky filaments, I smiled as I saw how the ground was sprinkled with not only whole hickory nuts but also shavings of the nuts’ green husks and beige shells discarded by hungry squirrels. Some of the nuts that remained whole often had the addition of teeth marks carved into their surfaces.
Plenty of older nuts were also on the ground with their young green coloring having transformed into brown. A hickory nut that was partially opened caught my eye. One fourth of its husk had completely broken off, and the missing piece appeared to be lying right next to the rest of the nut. I fitted the piece onto the whole. It was a match. On its own page, next to the cicada molt, the aged hickory nut was drawn in my sketchbook via graphite pencils.
Hickory nuts owe quite a bit of their larger size to a thick husk. One fourth of the husk of this hickory nut broke off, exposing the actual nut inside.
The cicada molt and the hickory nut are now sketchbook neighbors. Besides their neighboring position as black and white graphite renditions and the fairly close proximity in which the two were discovered out in the world, these subjects share two other things in common. Both subjects had the purpose of protecting what they kept on the inside, be that an insect or a nut, and both cracked, exposing the precious thing they shielded.