Image of the Week: Honeybees, Inside and Outside
© Durga Yael Bernhard
Here's a rather large illustration that I did almost twenty years ago for my picture book, Earth, Sky, Wet, Dry: A Book of Nature Opposites (Orchard Books, 2000). This book of rhyming opposites takes place within the world of a single tree – a pear tree at Montgomery Place Orchards in Red Hook, NY.
The book began with a desire to illustrate directly from my local environment. I had recently finished my second multicultural concept book, which involved extensive library research and illustrations from all over the world. Now I wanted to work from direct observation. I didn't find everything in the pear tree that I chose as my model, but I did find everything close to home. The beehive was in the trunk of an apple tree. The dark interior crevice stood in dramatic contrast to the airy blossoms outside. This became one of the pairs of opposites in the book: inside/outside. Light/dark, spring/fall, rainy/sunny, big/small are among the others. At the back of the book, I painted a glossary of all the creatures that live in and around a single tree, with short blurbs about each species.
I developed a whole technique for painting the bark of this tree, using five shades of brownish-grey that I mixed in little bottles and used throughout the book. Painting the bark at different scales was especially challenging. It almost became an exercise in abstract art.
To my great disappointment, the book never sold very well, and quickly went out of print. But these nature illustrations seem to elicit great affection in the people who visit during the art studio tour each year, and many of the originals have sold. It seems like art lovers are also nature lovers. This illustration is for sale, too. It's about 28" wide, painted in gouache on watercolor paper.
Oddly, the book was translated into Korean, and published there.
I wonder if they even have pear trees in Korea?
I give up on predicting where my art will go. It's all a mystery.
So is the title of the book in Korean. How is that four words?
A good week to all!
D Yael Bernhard