I decided to work on the Save the Bees design next, as it has gotten a lot of positive reaction. It’s cute, not quite so overtly political, and the colors are terrific. The design is a bit more complex though. It has many layers, which need time in between to cure, and the elements are precise. I use guides and stencils to achieve consistency, but I don’t worry too much about alignment. I like that if the wings are a bit out of alignment, it adds to the “movement” of the piece.
This was the first piece in this series that I did any serious illustration for. The bee images are informed by entomology study photographs of honeybees, which I then sketched out, scanned into illustrator, and drew. The rest of the elements were pretty simple geometric designs, as is more common for hex signs in general. I made the choice to NOT outline elements on the hand-painted version of this hex, in order to let the contrasting colors do that job.