I've been planning a series of six local bees (both native bees, and common transplanted bees) and chose a bumblebee. I recently discovered that I had previously (and inadvetently) selected a common European bumblebee (lacking peer review of the science behind my art) and decided I would make another bumble protrait, this time of the Common Eastern Bumblebee, or Bombus Impatiens.
If you live in eastern North America you may recognize this guy. It is yellow on its upper thorax, with a black spot in the centre of its back, and is black on the lower abdomen. I wanted to capture the round, fuzzy bee in flight and show how unexpected proportions of the bee make it appear as round and cuddly as an insect could be. Bumblebees are social insects that are characterized by black and yellow body hairs, often in bands. This hair comes in soft (long, branched setae) pile, that covers their entire body, making them appear and feel fuzzy. Like their relatives the honey bees, bumblebees feed on nectar and gather pollen to feed their young. This one has orange pollen on its fuzzy leg.
This is a linocut with two sorts of (collaged) chine collé papers (pale yellow body and translucent paper with foil inclusions for the wings) on Japanese kozo (or mulberry), 8.25" by 6.125" or 21 cm by 15.6 cm. There are 18 prints in the edition. I used the two coloured papers to try to replicate the insect's lovely pale yellow body and translucent wings.
Meet another bee which is native to this part of the world (the new world, or western hemisphere). This is the Melissodes, or Long-horned bee. These are small to medium sized bees, ranging from 7.5 to 18 mm long (0.3 to 0.71 inches). They are robust with fuzzy yellow hairs and conspicuous hairy legs. When you look at an enlarged photo of a Melissodes their hairy legs remind me of a sheepdog. The front part of the female's face is usually yellow. Like most bees in the tribe Eucerini, males have long antennae. Males are long-bodied, while females have short antennae and are round-bodied. This print shows a female. These are solitary bees and live in individual nests rather than hives.
I'm planning to make a total of 6 bees, all of which can be found here in Ontario.
This is a linocut with two sorts of (collaged) chine collé Japanese papers (a patterned pale yellow, and a translucent Mizutama tissue for the wings) on Japanese kozo (or mulberry), 9.25" by 8.25" or 23.5 cm by 21 cm. There are 12 prints in the edition.
Meet a bee which is native to this part of the world (the new world, or western hemisphere). This is the Agapostemon Sericeus or sweat bee.
It is metallic, iridescent, blue-green (though males have black and white or yellow stripes on their abdomens), and doesn't live in a hive. These are solitary bees. It generally lives in the ground, like most bees, or makes a nest in rotted wood. Though these are not like the familiar (but entirely non-native, introduced) honeybee, in appearance or behaviour, Agapostemon are also important pollinators.
I have a longer term project in mind, with a collection of different sort of bees we find locally in Ontario, inspired by a conversation with artist-composer-musician Sarah Peebles, who explained to me the difference between solitary and communal bees and the importance of solitary bees in our own environment.
They are called sweat bees, apparently, because they are attracted to perspiration, so this seems an apt fellow for such a hot summer day.
This is another project in progress. I love the idea of paper computing or paper electronics. I'm planning a print (à la Italian-speaking polar bear) which interacts with the viewer by making sound when approached. So I want the print itself to act as a (capacitative) sensor and a speaker. I've been sourcing electrically conductive paints and inks and even tried to make my own with graphite and block printing medium. I settled on Bare Paint which seemed the most user-friendly (though it is only available in black, I suspect because it's full of graphite). It's slightly tempermental as a block printing medium, but only slightly - which is great news as they never claimed it could do this. They have examples using it as a screenprinting medium, but usually screenprinting ink is less viscous. This 'paint' is quite thick and viscous so I'm really pleasantly surprised at how it performs in a block print. (They also produce an electrically conductive body paint so you can be a circuit and have blinkie LEDs shining on your skin, or your body can be a MIDI interface, if you so desire.) They even have a tutorial for how to make a capacitative sensor, which I followed. I combined their Arduino code (basically the CapSense library with slight tweaks) with some advice from Lady Ada's tutorial on using switches with Arduinos and Leah Buechley's Simple Arduino Audio Samples tutorial and the tutorial for paper speakers from the Kit-of-No-Parts by Hannah Perner-Wilson. There's no point in re-inventing the wheel, people. You'll have to turn your volume up to hear the buzzing, but it's there*. I believe the weird noise at the beginning, is because the start of the sample is being triggered repeatedly; I should be able to write better code to avoid that and go straight to the buzzing bumblebee.
As you can see, it worked in my demo, but it isn't yet very robust. Sometimes if I restart the Arduino it gets caught in a loop, constantly re-triggering the start of the sound sample. I plan to work on the code, and maybe play with the resistance accross the two pins to sense and receive the varying capacitance, and maybe add a small capacitor for stability. The other issue at the moment is power. I seem to be going through 9V batteries at an untenable rate**, so I hope to be able to switch to rechargeable AA batteries (and lowering the voltage, because no one want to deal with 6 batteries). Alternatively, I might get a 9V adaptor to power both the Arduino and the FET which switches the speaker on. That might be the way to go for the final product. Eventually, I'd like this to work with some very small parts; just the chip from the Arduino***, the FET, some resistors, maybe a capacitor, minimal wires or conductive thread or copper tape, a magnet, and power. I also need to find out if there is any difficulty having the sensor printed on one side of the sheet and the speaker on the other; after all, two conductors with paper sandwiched in between is by definition a capacitor so I wonder if I need any shielding or anything.
Also, I trained it to play the Ode to Joy (badly, from a musical perspective) employing the Tone function which outputs square waves at the frequency of notes. Now, don't you want to see what you could make your art do?
Note: If you're just here for pretty pictures and such and cannot make heads or tails of my descriptions of software or hardware, feel free to ask. I hope the above is comprehensible. If it isn't, feel free to let me know.
*thanks again Synap for the sound sample
**why don't they mark Amp-hours on these things?
***I think I'll have to use an ATMega chip, because the ATTiny only has 2K of memory and I don't think I can write a program and store 3 seconds of sound data in that little space.
This is a first edition lino block print of a bumblebee on Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper with yellow washi chine collé (collaged fine Japanese paper). The term chine collé is from the French for "papier-chine collé" or glued Chinese paper (though fine Japanese is more likely); it's a way to get a different colour or texture in a relief print. The bee itself fits with 10 cm (4 inches) square and the sheet is 20 cm (7.9 inches) square. The print is one of only 12.
For the month of March, the Mad Scientists of Etsy are celebrating entomology! Even though, butterflies are the new pirates, I thought I would make a bee, and since Reynardin encourages me to carve fur, I went for the fuzzy bumblebee.
Actually, this is sort of Step 1. I am planning an entomology pillow (yes, really). Also, I have this New Year's resolution to submit prints to print shows and contests, and there is a mini-print show in Ottawa, I'm considering. Prints must be 10 cm by 10 cm (and can be on sheets up to 20 cm by 20 cm). My other option would be, the Hand-Held Harpy. Or to make something else, pronto.
