bee painting – Page 2 – Pencil and Leaf

New “Big Six”: First Roughs

By Val Littlewood January 3, 2012 January 5, 2020 Uncategorized

It’s back to work now and I have started the new “Big Six Bumble Bees” commission and have moved on from scribbled notes to thumbnail roughs. This is where I sort out what I am doing and why, and where I check that they will work, not only as individual paintings, but as a set. I think they will be hung in a line rather than in a block and I know they will all be framed the same. So my initial considerations are these:

Which bee with which flower
A variety of poses
A variety of flower shapes
A variety of designs… i.e. left to right, central, bottom or top heavy.

The paintings are for a bee enthusiast who has a very beautiful old house in Lincolnshire, the flowers need to reflect the garden and of course be compatible with the bee. ie tongue length etc.

Scruffy notes….

First Designs

Things may well change but for now the Bee/Plant combinations are these:

Bombus pratorum:. The Early Bumble Bee with Cotoneaster. This is a small bee with a short tongue. I saw many of them at Grafham last year on Cotoneaster in the churchyard… and it’s a little compact flower with an arching design to the branch.

Bombus terrestris: The Buff tailed Bumble Bee with Mahonia. Mahonia is, year after year one of the very best winter plants for early bumblebees. I have just planted one here and saw terrestris queens on Dad’s Mahonia last year.

Bombus hortorum: The Garden Bumble Bee with Honeysuckle. The long tongued bumble bee who can access the nectar from the long tubular flowers of honeysuckles. It’s again such a favourite country garden flower.

Bombus lapidarius: The Red Tailed Bumble Bee on cosmos/daisy type flower. I love to see bees running around the top of flowers.. it may change into a thistle, but I wanted one central flower head for the set.

Bombus pascuorum: The Common Carder Bee with a foxglove. I saw so many of both at Heligan. A different shaped flower as well.

Bombus lucorum: The White tailed Bumble Bee on lavender. I had to include lavender, not only is it a true favourite with all bees but it is also a later flower.

Reassessing When I added a bit of colour I realised all the yellow and black bees were facing the same way and both of the redtailed bees were facing the same way. This wont do…

So I flipped the terrestris /mahonia, which looks fine, and then the lapidarius, which doesn’t alter the design at all. That’s better. It’s just a small thing but keeps the variety of pose, direction, and design that I want.

That’s all for today!….

A Very Merry Christmas to you All.

By Val Littlewood December 23, 2011 January 5, 2020 Uncategorized

At last, the year is on the turn and I am feeling optimistic about 2012.

I am hoping for a mild Christmas so that I can continue painting the shed, but if it’s cold and wet I shall be inside reading my Christmas book “Creating a Forest Garden” by Martin Crawford.

True, it is slightly ambitious for my mud patch but I am optimistic about that too.
I have just finished Marty’s honey bee for her site Beezations,
Her bees, she tells me, are shivering upstate! I sympathise. Marty, I wish you and the girls well for 2012.

And so, bee friends, bee converts and even those still not quite sure; while you are browsing the garden catalogues please add a few seeds for bees to your basket, order an early willow, some late Michelmas daisies, or plan where to put that bee house.

Your reward will be an exuberant, productive and buzzing garden.. and what could be nicer.

I wish you all Season Greetings and thank you for all your support, on the blog, through your kind comments and emails, for buying prints, postcards, originals and BUZZ books.
You have all helped keep me and the bees going and make the ups and downs of 2011 end on a high note.

Pretty Peponapis pruinosa: A Squash Bee for Joanna.

By Val Littlewood November 14, 2011 January 6, 2020 Uncategorized

This is going to be my last bee painting for a week or so.

We are about to move (yet again)and things will be a bit upside down, but this was one request I could not resist.
Joanna emailed me recently from Canada. She is fond of Squash bees.. how could you not be!

I had written about them briefly when I first learnt about the wonderful Long horned Eucerini bees back in 2009.

The Peponapis bees are in the same family and they are very–yes I am going to say it– they are very cute. Sadly we don’t have them here in the UK and although I saw the beautiful black Mellisodes bees on the squash flowers in Leu gardens in Orlando I did not see these little stripy charmers.
This photo is from an article in Science Daily, here about how good these bees are as pollinators. They apparently come out earlier in the day than honey bees, get on with lots of energetic pollination then sleep in the afternoon.

Squash bee flying onto a squash flower. (Credit: Photo courtesy of Holly Prendeville, University of Nebraska)

Towards the end of her University degree in Agriculture Joanna published a paper commissioned by the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign about the decline of native pollinators.
She writes:

“Peponapis pruinosa, the Squash Bee holds a special place in my heart and I’ve been waiting for some time now with fingers crossed that you might paint this bee, but it recently occurred to me that I could easily contact you directly and make a request. This Squash bee is a solitary bee and the females make ground nests. The males spend their time in and about squash flowers – and they sleep there after the flowers close in the afternoon. I spent an interesting few weeks with a professor once spending late afternoons on a squash farm going from flower to flower, opening them up to count the resting bees. There is a mathematic correlation between the number of male bees in squash flowers in a given area to the number of females in the ground nests. By counting the bees, the professor was able to determine how many females were in the area.”

Don’t squash the squash bees.

I can’t think of a nicer afternoons’ occupation than opening up squash flowers to count these sweet little bees.
The males will overnight in the flowers and should you wish to see if you have any of them sheltering in your squash flowers you can give the closed flowers A VERY GENTLE squeeze.
A sleepy buzzing may be your reward … but don’t squash the squash bees.
Remember they are super pollinators for your curcubita crops.

I was of course delighted to draw a squash bee. Here is the stripy male poised on the edge of a squash flower (from a photograph of a Leu Gardens squash flower ) on the lookout, as ever, for a female.
A quick sketch to get the feel for the composition:

Peponapis pruniosa, The Squash Bee

Pencil and watercolour on Arches HP, 9 x 9 inches If you would like a print of this pretty bee drop me an email!

Snail Shell Bees: Days 4 and 5. Finishing stages and a word about my paints.

By Val Littlewood November 8, 2011 January 6, 2020 Uncategorized

The last stages of a painting can be the most nerve racking and the most rewarding.
Will I overwork it? Will I drop paint, tea or coffee on it. Will it look anything at all as I had hoped?

I had decided right at the start to add some colour to the main snail shell and the pine needles.
I wanted a little more colour in this painting to help unite everything, but without cluttering the image with too much detail.

Unfortunately I did forget to take step by step photos of this stage. ( just when my friend John had congratulated me on remembering!!). When I work, I put the radio on and listen to plays, discussions, poetry, book reviews and news etc etc and tend to get engrossed in both the work and what I am listening to and forget to get the camera out.

It took me two more days to finish the painting.
I worked over many areas of the pencil to iron out any wobbles and keep the tones balanced. I painted the shell lightly, worked on the twigs and leaves and added the little boat sailing by the Needles.

Then strengthened the shell colour again and some more of the pencil work.

Here it is about finished. It all looks rather too dark and contrasty compared with the original, in reality it is softer, but this gives you an idea. Pencil work is very hard to either photograph or scan.

The Snail Shell Bees, Osmia bicocolour and the Needles.
Watercolour and Pencil on Fabriano Artistico HP. 12.5 inches x 14.5 inches

Was I pleased?… Yes, thankfully,I was. It’s no fun to work on something for a week and then hate it!
But, believe me, sometimes it does happen.
But I have become very involved with these two bees and their little world and will be sad to see them go. I always put a piece away for a few days before sending it off to its new home.
Niggles will disappear and glaring errors may become more apparent but there does come a point at which you have to stop! As I write this the painting is in the post!

Seeing the Snail Shell Bees in real life

I would so like to see these wonderful little bees in real life. I have of course watched the wonderful films on the Internet which I spoke about in my previous posts.
I know they are not common or perhaps are under recorded but to my delight I recently found a couple of reports of sightings not too far away from here.
One further north near Peterborough from April this year on Mollyblobs blog here and another one in Bedfordshire by Keith Balmer on Bedfords Fauna and Flora Blog here with a wonderful photo of the female bee flying with a twig.

Thanks to you both for posting about them. This gives me hope and next year I may be lucky!

A quick word about my Graham Paints.

I am about to write a small piece about my bee paintings for the good people at Graham Paints in America. I started using their gorgeous rich and creamy watercolours when I was in the USA. I painted my first set of bees for Deborah with them and all my “Buzz” bees for the exhibition.

Not only are they rich but they have a slight sheen to them when they are applied thickly. I do use quite thick paint and like to push it around quite a bit even on a small scale and I like the sheen. About half way through Deborah’s commission I was reading a bit more about them and discovered this:….
from M Graham’s Website:

“Our watercolor is created with exceptional amounts of pigment in a time honored binding medium of pure gum arabic and natural blackberry honey
Why Honey?
As an essential ingredient in our binding medium, honey contributes to moistness for smooth, easily controlled applications, increased pigment concentrations and freedom from reliance on preservatives. Because of the honey medium, our color resists hardening on the palette, or in the tube. It dilutes easily, often after months of disuse.!

… and it’s all true. It seems a poetic coincidence that I am painting bees with blackberry honey paints! … 🙂 They are wonderful paints… more on this in a separate post.

Snail Shell Bees: Step 1

By Val Littlewood October 31, 2011 January 6, 2020 Uncategorized

I have nearly finished this painting and it has been fascinating to work on.

Although I had roughed it out I wasn’t really sure how it would turn out at all and I had been quite anxious about starting it. But as it developed, it took on a life of its own and that’s just how I like it.

The atmosphere and the “feel”of a piece is much more important to me than technical perfection, which is why I could never be a scientific illustrator. I sometimes think it must be like writing a novel or perhaps a short story. You become drawn in this other world that you are creating, sometimes more involved in this imaginary world, rather than in the one you are really living in.

My two bees became characters with a purpose and I have drawn them as well as I could. The bees this time are Osmia bicolour bees, both male and female. Today the male who will be sitting on a snail shell.

The first steps, ideas and roughs and research.

Some people ask me how long I need to do a painting and I guess I need at least a week of thinking and research time before I do anything. I really need to get to know my subject, understand how it lives, where it lives and a bit about its character.

This is sometimes the slowest and most agonising part of the work, because all you have is a piece of white paper and you have to start make all the decisions.
It could be anything, any size, any colour, any composition but you have to bring something to life, create something from the simple 2 dimensions of that piece of white paper.
You have to work a bit of magic. I sit and doodle I read and I make little thumbnails until I get something which seems to work. That’s what I usually send to a client and I have to tell them that the sketch is just a guide, because things will change and more importantly need to be able to change. It has to be my decision.
I would now rather make a painting that pleases me and have it rejected by a client than make something I am not happy with to please someone else.
So to recap, this was the thumbnail I sent to Carol and Peter.
The two Osmia bees, she is carrying a twig of some kind to cover her shell nest with. The male hanging about .. as male bees tend to, waiting for a mate.

This thumbnail was very small about A6 I guess, and done some time ago.

Looking at it again I re-draw and re-think it a bit. I am going to include something personal for Carol and Peter, just as I did for the B hypnorum commission.

It’s more meaningful for them and is an interesting addition to the painting. It’s bigger than any of my other bee paintings and it has two bees this time.
The image area is 12.5 x 14 .5 inches approx painted on a bigger size 19 x 22 inch size sheet of Fabriano Artistico HP 300.
It was originally going to be slightly larger still, but there is a “comfortable” size for these bees and I had to reduce it a bit. It depends what your aim is of course, but large bees can sometimes look a little unnerving!

This is now sketched out at the size I want to paint. I have changed the position of the male as I want him to look more at us.
The gaze and the engagement with the viewer is important. I have always felt that to walk out in the countryside is to be observed by many tiny creatures. I like that feeling and I am happy to slide away from strict scientific constraints to create an image I want. After all, this is my painting.

Starting to paint

My current set up is not ideal. We live in two rooms in total, a big bedsit I guess, so everything is rather cramped and the light is not good. But I have a lamp and a laptop stand to angle the board. It has to do for now and could be worse!

I am always nervous about the first layers of colour, worried about keeping the surface clean and worried that I will not be able to give the bee character and life.
But I need to get some colour down quickly, to get rid of some of the accusatory white paper!

I have put some pieces of paper round the image to try to keep the Fabriano clean.
I am not really a precise worker and do push the paint around quite a bit…splashes are frequent :).
I guess it is a bit of a cliché but I need to paint the eyes early on. I have to establish a rapport!

I build up with brush strokes that follow the shape of the hair or whatever it is I am painting. It seems to help to give it an underlying structure, even if it is obliterated later on.

I am jumping a couple of steps for fear this should be like “watching paint dry” .. on with the wings. I don’t put too much detail in.

and then a tidy up. It’s mostly watercolour with some white gouache for the fine hairs. The hair on a bee has different qualities on different parts of its body. Slightly silkier under the thorax and slightly bristlier on the top.

This is the end of day one. So far so clean!

The Garden Bumble Bee and Honeysuckle..

By Val Littlewood October 14, 2011 January 6, 2020 Uncategorized

I have almost finished this commission.. and I really do like this one. It’s been a real pleasure to paint this Bombus hortorum, the Garden Bumble Bee. I am very fond of these bees and loved watching them clamber around Dad’s honeysuckle in the summer.
I have said before how fascinating it is to watch how they move, how they alight on the flowers, how they unfurl their extra long tongues and how they hold onto the sides of flowers with their feet.

I had been undecided about including that long tongue, but it is such a characteristic of this bee and after all she is approaching some delicious nectar filled flowers and this is very much how you would see her!!
This is quite a big painting.. well big for me.. Its about 14×15 inches. I just got rather carried away with the honeysuckle and I forgot to take more step by step photos…but, never mind, maybe next time.

For framing I would crop in, something more like this:

I tend to like off centre things and to have some nice white space. I work so hard to keep that space clean that I think I need to celebrate it :).

Buzz updates & B Hortorum and Honeysuckle, early stages.

By Val Littlewood September 30, 2011 January 6, 2020 Uncategorized

As I said in a recent post my Dad was not one to mope about ..so its back to work, back to bees, commissions and design work. In between all the ups and downs of the last couple of weeks there have some good things happening on the bee front. Excitingly I will be teaming up with the Bee Guardians next year for some projects.

Also for next year more exhibitions are planned at Easton Walled Gardens and Nature in Art, both a week long this time and with painting workshops attached. There are some talks, some one day exhibitions and painting classes planned. On the products front there may be some ceramics, some jewelry and more prints and cards.

And I have a million other ideas. Waiting in the wings there may be a house and a garden, with….joy of joys….a workshop. Busy is good. And on Monday 10th Oct I will be at the London Honey Show, 6 –9 pm with prints, books and cards .. will be fun. More details tomorrow.

Bombus Hortorum and Honeysuckle But right now I am working on B hortorum and Honeysuckle a commission for Peter and Di. In preparation for teaching people about painting insects and bees next year I decided to record a step by step for this one. Here are the first few stages of the bee. Sketches for pose and ideas for flowers, positions etc… but all may change:

Positioning on the paper:

First Colours: built up with directional strokes and refining as I go

I had roughed in the shapes of the flowers with a few faint lines to be able to position the bee. I use a soft pencil and very light strokes so that I can erase what I don’t want.
Now I start to think about how they will really work with the bee. It’s best to experiment on tracing paper first. The paper underneath really must be kept clean for this sort of work!! aggghhh…..

So close after my father’s death there is an extra poignancy to painting this bee, because I based the design on my observations of Bombus hortorum, the Garden Bumble Bee, which I watched for hours on Dad’s honeysuckle last year.

I had seen how they hold onto the sides of the flower and sometimes rest their back legs on the lower petal. So I decided to show this one on its approach flight, front feet outstretched to grasp the sides of the upper petal.

Tongue, I think, will be outstretched. The long tongue is such a feature of these bees and allows them to access nectar from these long tubular flowers. But I am not quite sure yet. I do change things as I go quite a bit!.. paper permitting :). Sometimes it’s such a struggle to keep that pristine white paper clean!

Bombus hortorum, Dad’s garden, 2010

Back to the Drawing Board

By Val Littlewood September 6, 2011 December 29, 2019 Uncategorized

Saturday in Battersea was excellent. The sun shone and the English wines were heavenly. They were mostly sparkling wines supplied by Gifford Hall Wines from Suffolk, the Bolney Estate and Meopham Valley Vineyard. The Rosés were particularly beautiful, Gifford Hall’s was pale and pretty and a recent prestigious Waitrose award winner. Think “fruity but dry wine with overtones of strawberry, lemons and roses” All served with equally delicious English cheese and home made bread. We do some things very well in the UK! So thanks to Marco and Harriet of North South Wines for lending the space and a big thank you to Nathan for organising it all. On their site they have a lovely old photo of the shop from 1847.. I have to say that not much has changed except of course the inevitable irritable traffic warden. Broomwood Road in th 1800's I was also delighted to meet James Hammil from the fabulous “Hive” shop in nearby Northcote Road. My only regret is that I didn’t have longer to look around the shop. There were so many things I would have liked to buy. James and I may organise something bee related next year. Perfect location!
Meanwhile I have now finished the little B. hypnorum with the small addition of a beautiful weeping ash which makes it special for my client. The next one on the drawing board this week will be B hortorum and honeysuckle. But I have just heard that poor Dad has broken his hip, so progress might be slow!! 🙁

The Tree Bumble Bee, Bombus hypnorum busy in the spring garden.

Watercolour and pencil 10 x 10 inches.

“BUZZ” at “Nature in Art” and Wool Carders carding!

By Val Littlewood August 9, 2011 January 6, 2020 Uncategorized

I was at Nature in Art near Gloucester all of last week and the weekend as Artist in Residence.

It’s a fascinating place. A lovely old manor house dedicated to the celebration of all things natural in painting, sculpture and ceramics, a good cafe and wild grounds.

Wonderful for wildlife. Michael Porter’s current exhibition “The Glance and the Gaze” is inspiring!

Artists in Residence have a studio to work in although I have been too busy talking to visitors to actually do much but I had my paintings and sketchbooks to show and talk about.
My good intentions to blog were thwarted by no internet access!

My paintings and sketchbooks and bees at the studio.

In between talking to the visitors I went out for a bit of bee spotting.
There is quite an extensive wild flower area with red clover, thistles and scabious which is full of bees and hoverflies. At the front of the building are some immensely tall, beautiful hollyhocks, which were busy with bumble bees and in the same border, a patch of furry stachys where to my delight a pair of the gorgeous woolcarder bees are indulging in some perfectly textbook behaviour.

Now please understand that this is the first time I have actually seen, with my own eyes, a wool carder bee carding. I was really quite thrilled to see the little female come back time after time to chew the fibres from the undersides of the leaves. She curls round as she gathers them up then flies back to her nest with her ball of fluff, to use for nest building.

The photo above shows the de-fluffed underneath of the leaf, and the bee busy trimming off the fibres. Nature in Art 2nd August. Photo Val Littlewood

I have never seen a nest but here from Wisconsin, USA is a photo from the excellent Bugguide by Ilona who found an Anthidium nest behind her mailbox.
There are two photos of the fluffy white nest, it is quite extensive, a lot of work for this little bee.

Female anthidium July 2010 by Ilona Loser: Bugguide

The male meanwhile was, in turn, resting and patrolling….. resting and patrolling. He was constantly checking his territory, flying backwards and forwards between the catmint, just a yard away, where he was feeding, and the stachys leaves where he sits in the sun. He sat with his wings folded for a while before spreading them out at his sides in a very characteristic anthidium pose.

These big beautiful furry males are able to hover and dart very quickly. It’s a very distinctive flight pattern and you can see him tirelessly chase away intruding bees and hoverflies.
They seems to be a source of constant irritation to him. I watched him suddenly zoom over and knock a trespassing bumble bee to the ground. After a tussle the bumble bee flew off apparently unharmed. It was all too quick to see if the woolcarder employed those fearsome spikes he is armed with.

A couple of days later after some heavy rain I found the two bedraggled bees sitting disconsolately on neighbouring flower spikes. They were still, cold and fed up, just waiting for some sun.

Wet anthidium male.

It is making me wonder if the anthidium make pairs, I have only seen these two on this patch.
After warming up the male flew off but the female took a little more time, she buzzed her wings occasionally and when offered my hand she happily climbed aboard for a few minutes, warming up and spreading out her wings to dry.

I was with one of the visitors who was delighted to see her and as I held her up we could see her large jaws. Her tiny clawed toes were quite clingy, I have found that a cold wet bee is often quite reluctant to leave the warmth of your hand. It’s been a wonderful week with many lovely bee friendly people, and some new converts.

Amongst the visitors were the wonderful Bee Guardians from Gloucester.. more of them tomorrow! So thanks to Simon and all the staff. I am looking forward to returning next year.

Bee Thumbnails, almost on the Drawing Board. And Walk/Sketch 6

By Val Littlewood July 26, 2011 January 6, 2020 Uncategorized

I am working on some new paintings.. so far I have been researching and sketching.

I have said before I don’t consistently use one beautiful and carefully annotated sketchbook, I wish I did, but never have and am too old now to change! So rough ideas are sometimes just scribbled on the back of bits of scrap paper.

I will be working on a Heligan Bee.. the only problem is which one??

I have thought and thought about this. I am undecided between a Bumble bee and foxglove, or the wonderful female Anthidium manicatum on the curious motherwort.

The Bombus hypnorum, The pretty Tree Bumble Bee will now be a commission. I am delighted to be painting this bee at last. I have added more blossom.

Another little Osmia rufa Red mason bee with cherry blossom was an alternative commission possibility. I am fond of this one so will probably do it anyway.

Below are a couple of thumbnail sketches for another painting of the snailshell bee, also a commission, for Peter and Carol who were fascinated by this combination of bee and shell.

This will be a bigger painting than usual and with two bees. A massive 14 x 14 inches! Nice. It will be two Osmia bicolors, male and female. This is another bee I haven’t painted yet. These are just first thoughts about how I might position these two bees.

Honeysuckle and Bombus hortorum. I watched these lovely bees both this year and last year on Dad’s honeysuckle. This one will be another commission I think.

I think that’s enough for now 🙂

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Day 6 Walk/Sketch

I didn’t get out till 5.00 today for my walk/sketch. I was out until 6.15. I know this because I have also been writing down where my day goes..I seem to get nothing done some days so decided to keep a record of where exactly the time goes! Its 7.15 now and I should be getting this posted as I still have emails to write/answer…. so just two sketches today, on this cold grey day. Dark skies and wind in the tall crop made for a gloomy and uneasy walk so I didn’t stay out long. The fishermen were wrapped up.

and the sky should be much darker!!

That’s a UK summer for you 🙂

Tag: bee painting