Wildflower with Bees in Colored Pencil

So I recently got out my colored pencils. I am not actually sure what inspired me to do so, but I’m glad that I did. One of my favorite mediums has always been colored pencil.

I am sitting here writing this, racking my brain trying to figure out what brought on my desire to use them again. It’s possible that my son getting into his art started it. Ah, ok, I just looked back through my Instagram and was able to see that I wanted to make coloring pages for a minute. So I had to color one in. Then I moved on to that galaxy daisy picture and I had so much fun with it, I wanted to use them more.

So there it is. Instagram to the rescue!

I bought myself a new pad of drawing paper too at this point. So, then, of course I have to decide what I want to draw. I don’t know if it’s as obvious to everyone as it is to me, but I frequently use some form of nature in my art. I looked up wildflower images on Pixabay and saved the ones that spoke to me. I have a couple others saved that I would like to get to at some point in time. I decided on this one.

 

The bees were a little intimidating to draw and color, because I feel there was not as much room for error as a flower petal. Also, those wings! I had nothing to lose, so I figured I might as well try. I had gotten a little bit of confidence back after some paintings and other drawings under my belt.

I used to be really good at graphite pencil and colored pencil. Those two mediums, plus acrylic paint, were my favorite to work with in the past. I think I’ve spoken about how I left my art behind for a number of years and I’m just getting back into it again. So little things like illustrating bees, can be a bit intimidating.

So I did my basic sketch. My husband said,” yeah, I thought it looked pretty cruddy but now that I see the finished picture I realize it’s not.” Or something to that effect. Haha! All the initial sketch is, is that. A beginning, an outline, etc. Here’s mine for this picture.

He’s right, there’s nothing really special going on here. In his defense, he did wait until the picture was finished before he made that comment. Good thing, too, because had he said it at the beginning, I would have been really offended, but since he waited, and the picture turned out great, I was able to laugh at it. Also, I did post this sketch on Instagram, so it was up for public praise or ridicule.

I started with the flower petals, because they seemed safe. Plus, if they didn’t turn out, I was not that far in that I couldn’t scrap the whole thing.

Can you even believe all those colors are in each petal???

I am very pleased at this point on how it’s turning out. Time to tackle the bees!

Ok one is done and I’m feeling pretty good! Time for the second one!

Nine colors in each tiny little bee! They truly are small too! This drawing is done on a 6″ x 8″ piece of drawing paper! I guess just look at how big they are in comparison to the colored pencils.

So I guess I didn’t take any work in progress shots when I did the center of the flower, the stem, or the background. I was doing so well with the camera shots too! Oh well!

I’m sure this photo doesn’t even capture every color that I used either. This is the only one I’ve got though.

Here is the finished piece!

I’m very happy with how it turned out, especially after not working much with colored pencils recently! I do not have the original for sale, however, I have it available as a digital file that you can print yourself, right here:  https://www.etsy.com/listing/517223830/wildflower-print-wildflower-botanical . I have it available in three different downloadable formats.

These are the colored pencils that I used to draw this. I haven’t listed each individual color, obviously. I can start doing that though. http://amzn.to/2sLTl08

All in all, this was really fun, and believe it or not, I colored the entire thing in one afternoon. I drew the original sketch a different day, but completed the rest in a few hours. I didn’t even get bored!