Work in Progress: "Bees"

So at the present moment, in my Illustration class, the topic at hand is "Bees." Given this New York Times article concerning the aforementioned bees, our assignment as budding illustrators was to create "a full-page, full color illustration...that would be used as the lead-in to the article...," among other things.

Upon reading the article, one thing becomes very clear, and that is that there is a lot to be said about these amazing little insects. However, given the expansive information that is provided in the article, I must admit that I found this assignment to be rather challenging with regards to what it was, exactly, about bees, that I wanted to illustrate.

After much consideration and even greater thought on the matter, I decided to focus on the relationship between man/humans and bees; of course, be warned, because my interpretation of the relationship is very exaggerated, and rather "dark," if I may say so myself...lol.

I went through several thumbnail sketch-ideas before finally settling on this particular sketch-idea. The following are stills of the work in progress. Enjoy.

Rough sketch...



Testing out color...



More color testing...



Well there you have it folks; a shady bee character peddling honey in a dark alleyway to a clearly addicted human male (a honey-addict). This is going to be one of those things you'll either like, or outright hate...lol. Looking forward to hearing the class' opinions in our upcoming critique session...lol.

As I am still working on the final scheme for the illustration, pictures wont be posted until it is completed, and submitted for critique.

Ciao.