Bees
As soon as I started drawing joyful art, I knew I wanted to draw bees. Although they might be scary to bump into in person, I feel like bee-themed artwork is always joyful in nature. Bees represent the spring and summer – ushering in warm weather and beautiful flowers. They make sweet honey to go in our tea. Bees are a joyous part of the ecosystem. I chose flowers for this that bees particularly love – poppies and sunflowers. I like to think it’s something that would bring the bees joy to look at too.
When I was three years old I loved running through the yard grabbing yellow dandelions in my hands. One day I grabbed a flower with a bee inside of it and the bee stung me! For the next year I was terrified of flowers, convinced flowers could bite people. But later in life I learned to live in harmony with the many bees and wasps in our rural area. I knew to give them their space, and they never stung me again.
My first attempt at sketching this piece didn’t turn out exactly how I hoped. I was still new to this style and trying new things, and the initial four rectangular panels looked very bland. I knew that I needed more joyful and exciting shapes, but I hadn’t yet figured out how to improve it. So I slept on it for months while working on other pieces, until one day it came to me. The panels needed to be hexagons! That really tied it all together.
This piece to me is like the spring – it represents new beginnings and an opportunity to try again. When a farmer’s crop does poorly, they need to wait months if not years to try again. Sometimes recreating a thing takes a lot of patience and hard work. But it’s always an opportunity to learn and improve if you have the patience with yourself and your creations.
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