Bumblebees and The Home Straight.

 Hello friends,

Well, this sees the end of the index card art challenge for this year. I'm going to backtrack two pieces from last week's share. primarily because it's a key piece to what came next.

Here's the first piece you remember. you probably remember the slightly more. sophisticated black, gold and purple design.

One evening, I was looking at the half flower that sits below the row of three flowers In the triangle shape.  All of a sudden the one on the top appeared to be a stylised bumblebee.  So that meant further investigation I figured with a few tweaks, it could be drawn out into a stylised bumblebee. So that is what happened next And in my last entry, I shared this.

Now, if nothing else can be said about this pattern. it was fiddly. So I decided to experiment a little bit further, especially as I was still in experimental mode with the new paints. This is what happened. I filled the space with the stylised bumblebee. Then I drew in the vein detail on the wings using micron pen.  This became

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Not a bad effort. and it certainly was easier painting the larger one than it was fiddling about with all those tiny bees!

No, as some of you will remember, I shared  the swatch samples that I made. on both black and white paper in the last entry here, So it followed that I would have to repeat this bumblebee. on black. So out came the gesso. I have to wait rather impatiently for it to dry before I could paint this. I know it's not identical, but it's close enough as they say for government work. the contrast on the black paper is incredible don't you think? the colours really pop and come off the page. So this became

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If I'm totally honest, I can see this bumblebee becoming a full blown experiment on all sorts of different mediums in the near future.

54/61  Another version.

Today marks the home straight, just seven more days left to go.

55/61 I decided to stop working on the bees, so I made a checkerboard. pattern of ink. of intense paints.and filled each one with a different pattern that I have been working on or using during the past 2 months. It wasn't easy using a paintbrush to do the mark making that I've become so used to doing with the fine tipped micron pen.

56/61  A motif I often revisit

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And finally. . .

 

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And that's a wrap. ICAD is over for another 10 months.   Thank you to everyone who's followed along and especially for those who have left kind comments on my efforts, they've really been appreciated.  Your encouragement keeps me going!

Until next time.

stay well stay safe.

Debbie xx