That's the name of my new painting!
I created it for the May Plant Parade Challenge on WetCanvas. The challenge was to create a piece using both cherries and cherry blossoms. I did a lot of thinking about what I wanted to create, and since a concern of mine has been honeybees, I worked that into the concept as it seemed so obvious. Show the flowers, show the delicious product that we get from them- thanks to honeybees. Obviously you'd never actually see flowers and cherries on a branch like this at the same time, but showing it this way seemed to be the best way I could illustrate pollination. The painting is 12" x 9" acrylic (big surprise, right?). I haven't gotten a proper frame for it yet- I think I'll get a white linen liner with a white frame.
I've also got this as an 8"x10" print on Etsy and as with all of my 8"x10" prints, $10 from the sale of it will go to pollinator.org, part of the CoEvolution Institute, toward bee research.
I had originally planned to do lots of bee related drawings and art this month. I do have a painting I'm working on- and tomorrow I'm at Old Towne Crafters all day, so I'll have lots of time to work on it. It's so little (9x12 I think), so hopefully it WILL be done soon.
But in the meantime, instead of working on drawings, I've been working over on Etsy...
While browsing around the site, I found other artists on Etsy who are concerned about the honeybee crisis and who want to help by raising awareness or donating proceeds from sales, or both!
Etsy has a great community and part of that community is Etsy Teams. Teams are groups of artists and crafters with something in common- whether it's location, or type of craft, or nationality, or- pretty much anything!
I contacted some of the other artists who expressed concern about the bees to guage interest. Since everyone seemed enthusiastic, I created the Etsy HoneyBee Helpers Team. Along with that came the Etsy HoneyBee Helpers Blog, which has information about Bee Team artists and their news, what we're doing to help the bees, what related things are going on over at Etsy, etc.
I know things will probably start out slowly, but I'm really hoping we can all come up with some great ways to raise awareness of CCD and the importance of bees and maybe actually make a difference.
Incase you may not already BEE aware, there's a honey bee crisis going on. You can read more about it on http://www.helpthehoneybees.com , http://www.honeybeepreservation.org , and http://www.vanishingbees.com . It's a very, very sad thing for someone who loves bees as much as me, to hear about them being in such a bad way and no one can really pin point just one reason why- yet. But it's also a very bad situation for humans in general, as a lot of our food supply depends on honeybees, and food prices are getting higher as it is.
I've wanted to do a series of bee drawings for a while now, so this seems like a great time to start that. With the flowers in my garden starting to bloom like crazy, I might be able to get more inspiration there.This month I'm hoping to get a small painting done, and as many small drawings as I can- I'm looking to sort of challenge myself to do a bunch. I've seen some teeny-tiny drawings and paintings in little frames (I'm talking 2" x 2" here) and they are ridiculously cute. So I'd like to try my hand at some of those.
If I do a few this month in my spare time- especially since drawings generally don't take that long, and if I do a small painting, hopefully that won't take too long either- I can put those up in my etsy store. And if I sell anything, I can donate to one of these bee research charities.
I've loved bees since I was about 6 years old (when I was known as "the bee girl"... Ask my family... I'm sure they loved hearing how their kid was a bee-loving-weirdo). And now that I'm doing a lot of flower and bee (and bugs in general) artwork, it seems only natural that I should make some contributions to help out the bees that I've loved so much for most of my life.
The palm tree painting. It is a pretty tedious one, with having to paint each individual little frond and everything. But I hope to have it done relatively soon! I'll be on travel this upcoming week for work, and I won't be bringing this painting with me like last time I was on travel- it's just too big. But the colored pencils and some paper will be accompanying me, so maybe I'll get to work on something nice while I'm away, if I get any ideas between now and then!
I found out a week ago that I was accepted into the Seawall Art Show in Portsmouth, VA, this August. I'm so excited! My first official show of the year! :)Now that I'm officially actually doing a show, I guess I should start the mat cutting process again, and put together some prints... While that's not my favorite activity, once I put my mind to it and get into the swing of things- and devote an evening here, an evening there to it- it goes pretty quickly.I'll probably also participate in this year's Earth Day celebration in Leonardtown, too- a smallish show to kick off the year.That's all for now... but if I get a chance sometime today, I'll post a picture of my palm tree painting and how that's coming along.
