Sticky

Acrylic on canvas, 23.5×23.5in. Available as a print and on products at Redbubble.

I love honeycomb – it’s one of nature’s beautiful patterns. Also it’s delicious. I made the background of this by printing out a hexagon as a template, cutting it out, then tracing around it in pencil on the blank canvas. Then I painted over the pattern in black. I used fluid acrylic and water to make organic-looking shapes in the honeycomb cells. Then I added more fluid acrylic to the top of the painting to drip down like sticky honey. This was the trickiest part – getting the drips to drip down straight. It was made even harder by the fact I was painting outside and it was very windy.

I found that it was easiest to get straight drips when I was inside, and if I added no water to the fluid.

I prefer a “gritty”, textured look to my paintings so I sprayed some black aerosol onto the drips before they dried.

Finally, I looked up a picture of a bee online and copied it onto the canvas in purple using a paintbrush. I thought purple would really pop against the yellow background. This was a lot easier to do freehand than I thought it would be! Maybe I’m getting good at this.