Creating Realistic Insect Wings for Fly Tying

step by step tutorial

Realistic Adult Hex Mayfly

My favorite technique for creating realistic wings, as well as stonefly nymph wing buds, is to capture a living specimen, and photograph it with a macro lens.   Placing real wings onto white paper while photographing simplifies the process of retaining natural colors as well as transparency through the wings; because printers don’t print white, instead white areas remain clear when printing wings onto transparent material.

The next step is to open the digital photos in Photoshop, tie-in-tags are hand drawn onto the wing bases to help facilitate tying them onto a hook , the wings are copied, a new Photoshop canvas is made, sized for printing an 8.5” x 11” sheet, and rows of wings are pasted onto the page, often in various sizes, including different wings for right and left sides of the fly.

The thing to remember when printing onto clear material is to set the printers paper option to “transparency”.  I use a color laser printer to produce my wings and my favorite material is called Dura Lar, a tear-proof acetate alternative.  Clear sheets of acetate are also suitable.   Dura Lar comes in a variety of thicknesses and I use 0.003 thickness most often, is perfect of mayflies, stonefly wings and wing buds, and for longer wings, such as dragonflies, 0.004 thickness prevents them from drooping.

After a sheet of wings is printed I will sometimes print an identical copy onto white paper, which is placed under the transparency to help see the fine lines while scribing wing veins.  Sometimes, for houseflies and other insects, I will simply print the wings onto a sheet or regular white paper, staple a sheet of Dur Lar on top, and trace and scribe the wing veins with a bodkin.

The processes of hand scribing wing veins is fast and easy for some bugs, such as houseflies and bees, while others, such a dragonflies and hex mayflies, takes longer.   Some wings look better when half of the veins are scribed on one side of the transparency and the other half on the reverse side, such as Hex mayflies.  Scribing mayfly wings with alternating veins done on both sides results in a 3-d effect and a much more natural and realistic appearance.

To scribe wings I like to use bodkins with very short needles, which allow for greater control, especially useful for intricate detailed work.  I place the printed transparency over a sheet of white paper, which makes the printed wing details easier to see, and both of these sheets are placed on top of a magazine.  Having a magazine underneath during the scribing process allows for pressing deeper along main veins, and pressing lighter for shorter interconnecting veins. 

Occasionally, upon completion of vein scribing, I will color the wing with a Pantone marker, and quickly wipe it off with a moistened paper towel, leaving coloring only in the scribed wing vein groove. 

The final step is cutting the realistic wings from the transparency with small fine tipped scissors.
Additional coloring, with clear acrylic vanish, tinted with a hint of pigment powders , is often best done after the fly has been tyed.

How to Make Realistic Wings - 2005 Tutorial
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