Sep 9, 2010

Flying in plein air


Untitled
13x13" watercolor quintych

Back when I was capturing caterpillars (in watercolor) in my garden, a couple of bees were buzzing around. You know I had to paint them. They move much faster than caterpillars. They don’t fly as fast as F-15 Strike Eagles which I’ve also painted, but they may be even more challenging to capture in a painting. F-15’s fly overhead in a flight pattern, so if you don’t capture one the first time over, you can get the next one. As far as I can tell, bees have no set flight pattern.

So here are my bees. I may not have mentioned to you, but I have a little sumi-e under my not-so-black belt. Sumi-e, which for those who don't know, is Asian brush painting done with ink (sumi). Sumi-e is something I studied at one time so I could learn some of its beautiful strokes and incorporate them into my watercolors. These bees would qualify as sumi-e had they been done in ink rather than watercolor.

1 comment:

  1. These are beautiful with the simplicity of your strokes. And now I know what sumi-e is. :-)

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