Sauron Butterflies

After spending the last couple of months drawing moths and their magical eyes, we were delighted by this article in the New York Times:

A new genus of butterfly, with dark, eye-like spots on its distinctive orange wings, has been named after Sauron, the arch-villain of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic “The Lord of the Rings,” whose gaze lingers malevolently over the lands of Middle-earth…

…Tolkien often depicted Sauron as a disembodied, all-seeing eye, writing in 1954’s “The Fellowship of the Ring”: “The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.” Film adaptations followed suit.