"Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much."
Our art project today is inspired by the magnificent qualities of the Honey Bee. Honeybees live in large "families" and are found all over the world. The honeybee is the only social insect whose colony can survive many years. That is because they huddle together and eat honey to keep themselves alive during the winter months. Because of the bee's selfless nature and devotion to its hive the bee is a SYMBOL of community strength and coming together to achieve great things. . | |
| Honeybees pollinate more than 100 crops in the U.S. which is necessary to the on-going life cycle of many crops. It also delivers humans with wax and honey. Their wings flap 11,000 times per minute, which is why it sounds like they are "buzzing". Though Bees can carry 300 times their weight and never shirk their duty to community contributions, they also “stop and smell the roses” every day. Check out what these students have learned!!! |
Let's Get Started...
You will need...
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Using pencil first, begin follow along step by step with the instructions above, OR you can follow along with this video tutorial I came across. This was created by another artist and his son. Draw several bees on your honeycomb paper - YES draw right on top of the honeycomb. You can choose to draw your bees BIG or small, it's up to you! After you draw your bees in pencil, be sure to trace your pencil lines with permanent marker. | |
We are going to color our bees today using crayons. The most important thing to make sure you color well are the wings. I used a black crayon first to draw veins in my wings. This gives them a realistic looking texture. After that I outlined each wing in gray, and colored over top of everything with white crayon. After that, I colored in the shine spot on the eyeballs white, I used gray for the thorax (middle section) and finished the legs with black. Finally, I colored the rest of the bee with yellow.
REMEMBER crayons are made of wax and push water away. When we use our washable markers and water later, the crayon will stay put and your be will look the same!
Honeycomb is a stack of geometric shapes called HEXAGONS. Hexagons are useful shapes. They can hold the queen bee's eggs and store the pollen and honey the worker bees bring to the hive. When you think about it, making circles wouldn't work too well. It would leave gaps in the honeycomb.
To give our honeycomb a realistic look we will be using a few different crayons first. Remember, the crayons will resist the water paint effect we are going to use later. I chose a couple of different yellow crayons I had in the box, a brown crayon, and a white crayon. First, I outlined each hexagon with the yellow crayons. Notice, that I only traced the lines that I could see. If a bee is covering the line DO NOT trace it.
After that, I gave a swirl of white crayon in the center of each hexagon. Finallly, I traced the outside of each hexagon one last time with the brown crayon. This last color really makes the hexagon shape POP!