Insects, Spiders, and Other Terrestrial Arthropods

These books are so helpful to use as references for painting. Very clear photograhy. I would have liked a few close-up shots for some of the images perhaps, but otherwise a great book. (Although I'll admit some of the inclusions in this book made my skin crawl!! I really just wanted the insects and not the spiders, but that's not the author's problem!)

This is really a nicely done guide and almost fits in my coat pocket. The pictures are fabulous and the insects are divided up into their respective families with very clear identifying traits. I'm really impressed, so much easy-to-use information in such a small book. This would be a great precursor to an entomology class. Some of my favorite critters are in the Psuedoscorpion order and are the cheliferids and chernetids, both of which look like tiny ticks with claws. So very cool. I actually found one once in Washington state--in my kitchen! It was very, very tiny. I digress. A book like this is handy if you are always finding insects and wondering what the heck you are looking at. A good value!

This book has a lot of useful information about insects. It describes basic characteristics, life cycle, and much more. It also includes info on other terrestrial arthropods, such as spiders and centipedes. As a field guide, it focuses on families of insects, not species, which makes more sense because there are so many species that are hard to identify. There are great photographs and descritions as well.