Just a little something

...I hammered out at 2 in the morning. I'm pretty pleased with it, m'self.

Now, it's totally not obvious as to where I'm going with this drawing, I'll admit. Here's the backstory: Husband and I were discussing bees at one point yesterday. Paddling down some meandering stream of consciousness later that night, my brain latched onto the idea of Queen Bee. A literal bee costume made me roll my eyes, so I tried to think of how I could humanize it a bit. The big, traditional queen gown thingy also did not appeal, nor did it remotely look like a bee, unless that bee had stuck a bike pump up its rear end and inflated itsself. Hop back in the mental canoe, and I started to imagine a sort of rakish, dandy-type queen. The kind of queen who didn't have to deal with a male counterpart, so she could pick up some of those attributes herself. But, she still needed to obviously be a girl. For some reason the whole Louis the Sun God/Marie Antoinette look felt very right. Easy enough to slide from fop to fem too. That, and the gown/jacket has a much more bee thorax look to it (trust me.)

So, right, most people would not look at this and go 'Aha! She's obviously dressed like a bee!' A lot of that is deliberate, as I'm not trying to send this poor woman off to a furry convention. Blah theater, blah creative license, blah. I think it'll be much more obvious once the drawing gets colored in, though. Yes, I'm gonna do almost entirely black and an amber color, all in varying types and texures of fabrics. The knickers, stockings and shoes are all gonna be done in blacks, as are her gloves. The top part of the jacket is going to be done in an amber velvet, or possibly something with a little more pile (shag.) The lower, gown-part is gonna be done in an amber moire. The vest -- eh, probably a mix of both; I'm not so sure about the specifics of that yet. The lace bits in the cravat and around the arms is going to be done in an aged, soft yellow lace, to give it a nice antique-y feel, I think. It may be too contrast-y with the gold/black thing, but we'll see. Oh, and you can't see it so well in this small picture, but the cravat is actually going to be sewn so that there are hexagonal shapes in between the layers of lace, not just a random fall. My one real obvious nod to the whole bee thing.

One last detail that you can't see (I still need to draw the back) are the wings, or at least how I'm planning on suggesting at them. The back of the jacket is not going to have an obvious waist like the front; the skirt portion is actually going to fall from the collar. There will be two pleats that will have the fabric drape in roughly a triangular fall which gets gathered up into the bustles shown in the front view. Trust me here. What I'm planning on doing is to embroider the 'veins' from inside the wing down the triangular-ish fall in the back which possibly dissolves into more traditional embroidery at the bottom/sides; the idea being that the triangle mimics the shape of wings folded across the back, and the embroidery hints at wings without there being two coat hangers covered with sequins stuck to her back. Again, I need that second drawing and some crayons.

The wig: probably all black, but possibly the same faded, yellow-y color as the lace? Not sure about headdress yet. I've already got the throne worked through; very Rococo-style, ornate, with gold and gilding, yet with an ovious hexagonal shape to it. It's all figured out -- now all I need is a script that involves a queen bee ruling from her hive, with late 18th century style!

Piece of cake, if only someone would eat it.