Bees Back at Easton

Last week on a beautiful Spring afternoon we had the private view for the “Plants and Pollinators” show at Easton Walled Gardens. This week has been snowdrop week and the Gardens have brimmed over with sunshine and visitors. There are 19 of the bees on show with their explanatory labels, notes about bees, my technique and prints and postcards for sale.

















The gorgeous black form of the Large Garden Bumblebee.. one of my all time favourites especially as I had first seen it in my father’s garden.

It has been a while since I have shown the bees and it was so SO lovely to see them back on the walls of the Coach House which was our Easton painting workshop home. It was also particularly lovely to see some of the old painting group! Thank you all for coming along.

The show will continue into March and  I shall be there on some of those days, talking about my lovely bees, what to grow to encourage them and how I go about painting and drawing them.
The new bee, the Tree Bumblebee was finished and framed in time and I now feel I want to continue filling in the gaps of my set of British bee paintings. I had seen a couple of bees in my garden last year that I have not yet painted..only about 230 species to go Val!

I am sharing the space with botanical artist  Dawn Wright whose beautiful painting of lilac was featured on the private view invite.

Big thanks to Ursula Cholmeley and her team of gardeners and organisers who have made it all possible!
The show continues until 17th March and I will be there on Thursday 7th. Thursday 14th and Sunday 21st.
Do come along to say hello if you are in the area.

Prints of the Buzz Paintings and sets of cards are available to buy from me. You can see the selection here at
https://buzzbooknprints.blogspot.com/  you can see more about each bee by clicking on the image.

Snowdrops at Easton taken yesterday morning… beautiful!

A New Bee for Easton

It’s been a while since I have painted a bee but, in February 2019, I am delighted to say “Buzz” the Bee paintings will be returning to Easton Walled Gardens.  They will be part of a “Plants and Pollinators” exhibition. My work will be alongside the lovely botanical paintings of Dawn Wright see her website here. https://www.dawnat29.com/.It’s a few years since I painted a bee..in fact nearly 4 years. The last one was the lovely B ruderatus .https://pencilandleaf.blogspot.com/2011/05/black-queen-beautiful-bombus-ruderatus.htmlThis bee and another favourite, the female woolcarder bee, have never been made into prints and for this show I will be making a few prints of these for sale, as well as a new watercolour. I have chosen the Tree Bumblebee, Bombus hypnorum, as Easton was the first place I saw this feisty little bee, collecting pollen from an early flowering espaliered cherry tree, in the spring of 2011. Back then it was  relative newcomer and so had not made it into my original British Bee exhibition. I have decided the painting will be of the little bee perching amongst the cherry blossom just as I had first seen her.

As usual my working method is this: Thumbnail sketch to think about layout: then build the body shape of the bee, then “flesh” it out.

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First thumbnail rough for B hypnorum

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Construction of the bee form.
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Filling out the body.Then some colour notes:

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hypcol4    hypcol3 
I am looking forward to making detailed painting again..I just hope I can do it!

Some Lovely Bees

The only thing to do at the moment is to go out and commune with some bees.

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Tiny tiny delicate white faced  Hyleaus bees on the coriander flowers and the furry lamb’s ear. They are such a favourite of mine. No-one ever bought a print of this one ..too much like a wasp people said…..

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The normal hover flies look enormous in comparison

Little male Bombus lapidarius sleeping away a rain shower. and without its pollinating bee anymore, the self pollinating bee orchid from a grassy patch by the reservoir.

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All that dressing up with no-one left to impress, except a few of us humans…
The male longhorn bee is known to visit this beautiful thing,.. but they are very rare in the UK.
It would be lovely to see one; it is the right sort of habitat with vetchling, clovers and trefoils.
Maybe another day .

December Bumble Bees

Today was mild-ish and weakly sunny and the sweet smelling winter honeysuckle by the kitchen window is in bloom. It seems too early… and it seems way too early (or too late) for little worker bumblebees to be collecting pollen.
But there they were. But the winter honeysuckle is a real star of a bee plant and if I cut it back it will flower again. The bees are very small so I am not sure if they are terrestris or lucorum workers. Just a hint of yellow after the last black stripe makes me think perhaps terrestris… but so tiny!!

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and here they are together…

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I hope these little bees are close by and have a well protected nest and that winter is kind to them.

 

Beekeepers Ancient and Modern

Also, to accompany these, a few sketches of beekeepers, ancient and modern. I am considering adding some figures to my current bee charm project and have been working out what I might include. Some are based on old manuscript drawings and some are modern beekeepers and of course there is a bear, which I changed a bit ..
The figures are all engaged in varying bee keeping activities from evasive action, banging pots to quell a swarm, catching a swarm, general hive work and cutting the comb. The most sinister are Pieter Bruegel’s three faceless hooded figures with their circular wicker face masks ( Pic 4) Wonderful…

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Where there is honey, there is bound to be a bear.

Bees, Blossom and a Fat Baby Bird.

I am busy working away on some prints and other things but last week I saw the first bees in the Garden for 2015.

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9th Feb: First Bees

I have a small winter honey suckle outside the kitchen door and 4 honey bees were backwards and forwards on a sunny warm afternoon. Huraahhhhh.. It is cause for much rejoicing and worthy of recording.

And then here is the first blossom from our Bird Cherry Trees which I will be making some work about this year. We have been chopping the trees back and I had brought a twig inside to hopefully draw. One week later and it is in bloom. The trees outside are poised…

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On Saturday we went into Cambridge and had  look round the fascinating Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. As well as an excellent small print show (see The Power of Paper), the small museum is stuffed with fascinating and very sketch-able things.

Favourite on Saturday was the exquisite baby bird carving. It does not have a label but is in a case which invites the viewer to make up their own minds about the possible story behind the enigmatic objects it contains. It looks Japanese in its elegant simplicity.

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A5 sketchbook, pencil

This gorgeous little carving with its pleasing curves and that big wide baby bird mouth reminded me so much of the baby robins we see in the spring.  It’s the sort of thing you long to pick up and hold in your hand.  There was also something of a winged flying saucer about it and it sparked an old memory of those sherbet flying saucer sweets, from a time when day-glow rice paper and sickly sherbet seemed like a good idea. Hmm.. not much has changed then… Anyway it has all made Spring seem not too far away now !

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.

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A blurry little Pied Shieldbug from Holme Fen.

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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The background, bugs and bee roughly put together.

More soon.

Back to the Bees… and A Book with Me in it..

I said earlier this month that I would be getting back to the bee paintings and the first is going to be the lovely Bombus ruderatus for the Beautiful Beasts blog.  Bombus ruderatus: the Large Garden (or Ruderal) Bumble bee This bee has a special significance for me as the only time I have ever seen one, to my knowledge, was in my father’s  garden.  I had seen a big all black “something” flying around the yellow archangel for a couple of days and then luckily one day I had my camera. If it had been the more usual striped  variety I would probably not have noticed it. You can see more about this bee on my post “A Fenland Bee” here.

It is also the Iconic Bee for the East Midlands so a perfect Fenland “Beautiful Beast” and coincidently I thought I saw one on Sunday at the Holme Fen visitor info stop. There is a wonderful large planting of white and red dead nettle by the notifications boards which is a favourite flower for these long faced, long tongued bees. So far I am just making some notes, rough ideas and colour sketches.

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The all black version, which is the one I will be painting is officially called Bombus ruderatus var.harrisellus

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Habitat sketch from Holme Fen and, yes the unexpected Highland cattle are there  to help manage the grass land. Thinking about the bees in the white dead nettle.

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And as I saw the big black bee in Dad’s garden on the yellow lamium

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These small sketches are about 5 x4 inches

In the Garden

I was also so very pleased to see for the first time this year the gorgeous Tawny Mining bee.My photo does not do justice to the prettiness of this little bee with her beautiful foxy two tone colours. I had rescued her from a spider’s web, she is just taking a moment on my hand to regain her composure.

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And also, I have, at last, seen the Hairy Footed flower bees, both male and female on the pulmonaria.

A Book with Me in It!

It’s a big thank you to lovely, bee friendly, Andrew Tyzak for asking me to contribute to his wonderful book. “Drawing and Painting Insects”

Andrew draws and paints and makes exquisite prints of insects and runs the website Bees in Art. I am honoured to be alongside such high quality artists and at a generous 200 pages, the book is packed with images of insects of all kinds, in painting drawing and prints. There is also lots of info on how to go about painting and drawing these fascinating creatures. I was particularly delighted to see my Great Yellow Bumble Bee on the cover!

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About me and the bees

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Some step by steps of my work….

The book is available from all good bookshops! First the book, next the film ….:)

Let’s help the BEES…shall we?? It’s so very easy.

First bee sightings
I haven’t really been looking for bees yet but I know from BWARS reports many have been active in the south over this mild winter. On Saturday I saw my first 2014 bumble bees and a honey bee here the garden, along with a big bee mimic hoverfly.
The bumbles were the Buff tailed Bumble Bee, Bombus terrestris and the Early Bumble Bee Bombus pratorum. My bee friendly neighbour has an early clematis and we both have winter honeysuckles and the wild bird cherry is just coming into bloom.
The bees were busy around them all. We were talking today over the fence. “When I saw the bees were back it just made me smile” she said. Me too Carole!

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My painting of the big beautiful Bombus terrestris on wonderful bee friendly early Mahonia.

The last bee of 2014 was this Bombus terrestris I photographed on Nov 30th on very late flowering comfrey.
The comfrey is such a star.

30th-Nov-2013

It’s so easy? PLANT MORE BEE FRIENDLY FLOWERS!!!

It was very depressing to hear of the discovery of yet more  new problems for Bumble Bees last week. It has just made me more determined to redouble my efforts this year to help wild bees and promote their conservation. I am just a small scale gardener and the easiest, most effective and cheapest thing that people like us can do is to plant more bee friendly flowers…and goodness,  that is easy enough.

What I am doing…
I am thinking of how I can get people to join me in planting more BFF’s both here in the village and wherever they live. Maybe I will set up something online … but for now here is what I am doing

1 Bee house clean out, repair, reassemble and restock the solitary bee house with new tubes. Maybe build an extra one…Yes!

2 Order some new bee friendly perennials. Lots of online shops, and garden centres now display the helpful RHS pollinator friendly logo.

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There are also specialist suppliers. like Bee Happy Plants who I have bought from in the past.

3 Seed checking I am checking my seeds to see what annuals I might need to sow or restock. I save seeds from poppies, phacelia and  anything else I can think of that might help. It’s a random business but I end up with lots of seeds which I generally scatter on newly dug bits of the front garden. We are slowly getting rid of the grass out there.

4 Looking to see which flowers and trees the bees are visiting
We garden on very VERY heavy clay and the previous owners did not garden but put down grass. We are digging it up… slowly. I am not used to heavy clay and not all of the lovely bee friendly flowers will grow here. It is the beginning of year three for us here and I am beginning to see which plants are happy and which are not. Thistles absolutely love it..sigh…

5 Bee Fostering Collecting boxes for possible Bumble Bee fostering. My bee friendly local pest control guy Mathew brought 4 colonies to me last year. He is very VERY reluctant to move Bumble Bees and tries to persuade people they are benign, but some people just don’t listen. Three made it through to a certain extent. One lucorum, one very successful lapidarius and a huge terrestris colony. It was very rewarding.

Plant Lists For now if you are dithering about some new plants look for the many online resources and suppliers of Bee Friendly Plants. The RHS’ two PDFs Perfect for Pollinators: Garden Plants  and  Perfect for Pollinators: Wild Flowers are a good start.

Print them off… give them to your friends… pin them up at school, community centre, leisure centre, gardening club…anywhere….everywhere…  More bee encouragement to come… Oh and luckily my Tree Following trees, Willows and Horse Chestnuts, are very good for pollinators!!

I also decided my next bee painting will be Bombus Ruderatus the beautiful black version of the Large Garden Bumble Bee which I saw a couple of years ago in Dads garden. I made a sketch at the time but, especially as it is a fairly local species it’s time I made a good study.

Easton Show, A Sideways Step into Print and a Big Blue Bee

I have said before, if the blog is quiet it’s because my life is not. How true. Just two weeks before our Easton Group Show and I am looking at the pile of “stuff”, sketches, prints, half started paintings. etc. What to do with all this?

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I have regarded this year as one of experimentation, I have researched, studied, thought and made many, many sketches and notes, more than I could ever put on the blog.
It’s been a year to meet other artists and share ideas and to explore some new directions.  It has been illuminating.

So for me the Easton Show will be a sort of marker, the end of one phase and the beginning of the next. With a very exciting solo show at Easton arranged for a years time, it’s on with forward planning and a few changes in what I do and how I work.

Letterpress, Print and Books

Number one on my list will be my delayed side step into printmaking.
I now have my lovely small Rollaco Press, my big old Cropper Charlton nipping press and a little old Adana housed in the garage and we are ready to go.

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Rollaco Press with bee

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The big old nipping press with my much prized Boxcar Press apron.

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Adana poised and ready….

I had been exploring letterpress again when I was in Orlando with the very excellent guys at Mamas Sauce whose enthusiasm and dedication to all things printy was so inspiring.

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Mamas Sauce Printshop in Orlando

Although we are not there anymore I still keep up with what they are doing. See their site for some wonderful printmaking, links and videos. There will be planned returns to St Brides in London where I printed “Rook” …

 

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St Brides Foundation London Print Museum and Courses.

And a hopeful trip to the USA to the fabulous Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum next year.

There will be making small books, inspirational prints and maybe a ranting broadside or two. So adventures with lino and the press started just this week with a very simple bee! (what else).
The huge new queen Bombus terrestris are out and about. They were my inspiration and  I may call her the “Easton Bee” in tribute!

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Many bees

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And in other colours too!

Big Blue Bee for Easton

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Image 6×4”reduction print on Hosho paper.

I really do intend ( Yes ..I do know all about hells road..but a girl has to try)  to get back to the blog with a perhaps a bit of a printy make over for that too.

I hope you will join me.

Red Legs, Yellow legs, White legs and Blue: and Empty Garden status.

Bees, bees, very busy bees. All over the phacelia, the borage, the poppies, the bird’s foot trefoil and the catmint. The bumblebee workers are collecting pollen of many different colours. Back in 2010 I did a short blog post about pollen its wonderful shapes and colours see

Pollen : Beautiful Colours Fascinating Form

 

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Here are a few bees carrying different coloured pollens

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hortorum pl_resize      blue legs_resize      black legs_resize

The phacelia pollen is blue, and poppy pollen is black.

I took the poppy photo early this morning. Each day as the new poppies unfold there is an unseemly scrum amongst the bees to be the first to get to the pollen. It is very amusing to watch. They scrabble about, running round and round the stamens to transfer the pollen onto their hairy bodies. Then they may pause to brush the pollen into the pollen baskets on their hind legs.

Equally fascinating is watching the efforts that small bees make, to get in… and out of ..snapdragons. The flowers have a very firm snap. Sometimes they are almost entirely engulfed.

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And my much loved woolcarder bees (anthidium manicatum) have returned exactly on cue when their favourite Stachys plant is ready for them

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Here is Handsome on his favourite plant.

So where is all this excitement happening?

This was the garden at 7.00 am this morning.

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We have been here 18 months and with a bit of hard work have turned something barren into something bee and wildlife friendly. It’s very easy if you just plant some bee friendly flowers, which are not expensive, and you don’t mind a bit of a muddle!

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It looked like this when we moved here. A few more before and afters.

Front: Before and after

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Back: Before and After

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Back: Before and After:  The window behind the tree is where I work

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Shed: which is hard to see, before and after

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and the bit in the middle…..

I have put these together to encourage myself on those days when the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, to encourage others with a small garden ( the camera makes this look much bigger than it is!) to plant a few wildlife friendly things.

It’s cheap easy and endlessly rewarding.
Once done, sit back and enjoy the delights that wild things bring to our lives.