"Mellifica"

This painting started with drawing hexagons. I often use the ruler, compass and stencils to make geometric shapes that can be useful in guiding a composition. I found that by stretching the shape, it resembled a windmill blade. As the shape appears in nature in the form of honeycomb, and its association with bees, I thought of the idea of a “honey mill”. This is where the name “Mellifica” comes from as it means “honey maker” in Latin.

I imagined a mythical friend of the bees. She is standing tall and watching over them. Her golden hair turns into honey as it flows down the hillside. I added a small amount of honey to the yellow paint mixture. The land below her takes the form of snail medic, a legume foraged by pollinators. The plant takes its name from its resemblance to a snail shell. From looking at reference images, I drew the cascading shape of the legume and included the glandular white hairs that can appear on the stem and leaves.

I placed hexagon shapes around the central figure, which I then turned into bee boxes with some shading. I made a stamp out of bee’s wax sheets for candle making. I used this stamp to apply the paint to the windmill blades which are finished with gloss to contrast from the rest of the painting. The structure of the windmill is more pronounced in the pencil sketches, however in the final painting, the windmill blades are more abstracted and used to inform the the organic lines of the background sky.