Paint It, Billy Boy....

Now it is time to relax. Sit in front of the TV or have some of your favourite tunes playing on your favourite streaming service, get your acrylic paints out and brush away! Paint your abdomens yellow and everything else black, or dark brown, your choice, and then go back and paint the black stripes on the abdomens. The next step is to paint is the eyes. The eyes on these bees are positioned high on the edge of the head on little flats created when finishing.  Let's talk about the eyes for a moment.

I always try to paint deliberately human looking eyes on whatever creature I make for an automata. I feel it is a chance to add personality to a character. The location of eyeballs and the position  of the pupils can convey an emotion or action to the benefit of the story being told. In this case the eyes are small and only a pupil made of a little black dot can be used to communicate with the viewer. But I go back to the belief that a human eye often endears a character to an observer . Think how hard it would be to convey any emotion through the  compound eye that is actually found in bees!

At this point I apply a coat of matte acrylic varnish to every surface I've painted but..... it's not over yet. The matte varnish will make it easier to clean your project should it later get covered in dust and also make all surfaces the same level of reflectiveness. But hold on there;  to complete our swarm the next step for these bees will be to add wings, and of course with cutting them in there will be a touch up with the dark paint and matte varnish again!

Paint the abdomens yellow...

Paint the bodies black, add the stripes, and add the eyes.