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The Black Bee continued.

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Wednesday, 16 April 2014

The Black Bee continued.

It is lovely to see so many bees out and about now and I have returned to the painting of my East Midlands region Black Bee, Bombus ruderatus.

I have rethought the sketch a bit to now include 2 little Pied Shieldbugs (Tritomegas bicolor) which I had photographed inadvertently when I was trying to get a shot of the bees on the white dead nettle at Holme Fen. They are lovely, very design-y black and white. It’s a bit of a theme for this painting. Black Bee, White Dead Nettle, Black and White bugs.

A blurry little Pied Shieldbug from Holme Fen.

Two Shieldbugs, one at the bottom and one peeping over a leaf at the top.

Stage 1: Eyes first. If these are not right I start again.Then a little colour all round.

Stage 2: More darker colour all round and getting the head and legs right.

A detail of the head at Stage 2. Its about 1/2 “wide.
I am always concerned to get the “pile” right. Different bees have different sort of hair. This bee is a little more tidy than its relation, Bombus hortorum but has longer hair than some others. They are big bees, not called the Large Garden Bee for nothing.

This is almost done but I will make a few changes when I have the background sorted out a bit more. They say “an artwork is never finished, only abandoned”.. how true. You get to a stage when you don’t really want to see it again… at least not for a while.

I have not quite got as far as that with this bee. It will be finished next week I hope.

The background, bugs and bee roughly put together.

More soon.

Labels: bee art, bees, bombus ruderatus, Holme Fen, watercolour

3 Comments:

José Santos said...: Wow... That looks lovelly!; 19 April 2014 at 08:10
Tammie Lee said...: such a wonderful bee!
I really enjoyed hearing how you go about it and why, thank you for sharing that.; 21 April 2014 at 23:29
sharp green pencil said...: Draco and Tammie. Many thanks. The bees are lovely to draw . It should be finished this week!; 28 April 2014 at 12:23

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