Local Heroes

My next foray into the Ghost project involved a close investigation of the bees in my garden. Although there are true honeybees there, I concentrated on the native varieties. I was amazed to learn that there are so many different types of bees, many of which I had mistakenly thought were some weird type of wasp.
I chose representatives of four main families of bees in my area. There are so many variations within these families, but I chose the ones that were most visually interesting to me.  This painting includes a sweat bee, a mason bee, a bumble bee and a miner bee. They all are important pollinators. They make honey for their young and live in solitary pairs.

Ghosts II

I found some unryu paper that had quite large fibers in it. It seemed like it could be an interesting material to play with in my ghost series. I wanted to work with images of reptiles that I'd seen around my studio, specifically the northwestern garter snake and the western skink. I painted an image on a panel in black. Then I glued the paper over it and happily found that it was transparent enough to show the image through. Perfect. I laid down another layer over that to increase the tangle of fiber.
I began to paint highlights on the top, working with the transparency and glazing. I liked the image, but a ghost figure kept jumping into my mind. So naturally, I put it into the painting.