ACA theme

as part of the work on my "bee" theme, and as part of the closing assignment for "Year of the Fairy Tale" illustration class I've been taking this year, to learn more painting techniques, I'm doing an illustration for a Fairy Land zine on magic animals. of course I chose the bee. but as "bee" was already taken, I decided to be more specific and chose the "Australian sugarbag bee" aka Tetragonula Carbonaria bee, which is one of the native bees of Australia. this is a stingless bee, though it can give you a bite instead.

collating info here about the sugarbag bee as part of my research. another Australian bee I like is the blue-banded bee. there are a number of coloured bees native to Australia, which are different to the introduced yellow coloured honey bee that everyone is used to seeing.

for the illustrated page, I need to write a line about why this is a magic sugarbag bee, and draw a matching picture.

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Australian bee websites:

Sugarbag Bees blog http://www.sugarbag.net

Sugarbag Bees facebook page https://www.facebook.com/sugarbagbees

Aussie Bee http://www.aussiebee.com.au

Kin Kin Native Bees http://www.nativebees.com.au

I've been trying out my new artgraf water soluable graphite tonight with another drawing of a bee for my theme. I think it's sometimes called watercolour graphite. I put water in the lid and found my paintbrush and tried it out. I haven't got the bee shapes right yet but I love the variations in lightness and darkness of the graphite. there's even a slight shimmer and sparkle to it in this dim light. will see if it's still there in the morning daylight.

I shouldn't have tried the background wash though.. :( don't like it atm

another in (hotel room) biro practicing hatching (with wonky bee shape still)

today I went on an etching / print workshop at the ownership project gallery / print room in melbourne. learnt a lot. i made some prints to try different techniques, levels of colour depth, plate cleanup, colours, timings. used one of my bee drawings so I can add them to my theme work. falling in love with printing. you can get some very detailed marks with etching (with practice!)

i'll add more pics / steps later when on the computer

mono / black print

adding colour to sections

ghost print

coloured and hand painted selected colours

I tried making a bee from washi tape, but it turned out a bit wonky. I should have drawn the outline first instead of taping from memory. it was a good exercise in blending colours and creating texture and patterns and shapes though.

testing some woven eyes for my bees. these have a matte black circular warp threaded into cut fabric (calico in the first test), and shiny black stranded thread for the circular weft, travelling across and around the eye. I used the shiny thread to simulate the shinyness of a bee's eyes, and woven circles to remind of the multiple cells / lenses of the bees' eyes.

I learnt this technique from jude hill on her wonderful "considering weave" class / project

the first one didn't work out as i'd threaded both ways instead of one way only.

but the next sample worked out as I had hoped (seen in my mind) so i was happy about this.

a few more bee sketches in different media — I'm thinking of trying some of these in stitch (a cross between junko oki's work and jude hills' work such as this circle & the final piece in 'considering weave' — my own interpretation of it) and also as the fabric manipulation exercises for assignment 3. (to save time, and work on theme practice plus exercises at the same time).

basket weave for eyes

plus some other general sketches — I'm also trying to practice sketching things from my day or local area. some are done in a small notebook whilst out and about.

I still haven't separated my theme book from regular sketch book — must work on this. it's just more convenient to put everything into one book..

general sketches:

i've read ahead a little this time and on the flight tonight started a couple of bee drawing exercises. i have a new lamy (med) pen and it's lovely to sketch with! would like to try the fine & extra fine next too. I only had one sketchbook so I'll need to transfer the pages to my theme book (and hope i didn't wreck it by drawing on both sides of the paper..)

i did a few separate body parts that I'd seen on an amazing closeup photo found whilst googling "bees" images.

this is the original close up photo and bee photo and honeycomb photo. i combined a couple of these in my drawings. i made some notes about how i can see the tests in my head. some black satin, hand stitching, shiny white/clear fabric, fraying for the hairs, woven circles for the eyes, some stitches I think will work for centre cirlce on the back and antannea, plus more. i can see it in my head, so I just need to get it to work in reality now!

via bee portraits - sam droege
— bee google image search. I hope to draw more of his photographs, as they are amazing. the colours!

via can bees be trained to sniff out cancer — bee google image search

via cavity bee — bee google image search

some more theme ideas... hearts, suns or bees

I've started doing an online stitching class called whispering hearts with Jude Hill. it's a really great class — I've read through all the posts from when the class was run live in 2011, and will listen to the audio "whisperings" and watch the videos in the next few weeks when I have a better internet connection. the theme is hearts. it's great to see Jude go through the process of doodling ideas in a sketchbook, make some small stitched fabric samplers and then stitch the final selections into a larger piece. this is what I'll have to do for my theme work for class (I think).

I like the hearts theme too — I'm not really into pink and girly colours and hearts but after seeing some that Jude made and some of the ideas around them I think it's good to try something out of my comfort zone of technology-based topics.