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Common Yellowjacket Wasp

Common Yellowjacket Wasp line art illustration (click image to enlarge)

Common Yellowjacket Wasp full color illustration (click image to enlarge)

Artist's notes:

The Common Yellowjacket Wasp was completed on 6.22.2011. Whenever I approach a drawing with a great deal of black, I always have to pause, as it takes about 5 minutes for every .25 x .25 inch of black. However, in the interest of saving time, I have developed a method in Photoshop to fill in the black. So this saves me a lot of time, and I don't think the drawing suffers at all from this shortcut. The drawing is based on a photo by Gary McDonald.

Information about the Common Yellowjacket Wasp:

Yellowjackets are common, predatory wasps native to North America. They are members of the family Vespidae, which is a group of wasp species numbering around 5,000 different insects. Yellowjackets live in colonies, usually located in trees, bushes or other protected areas, sometimes in manmade structures. These wasps are generally smaller than others, roughly the size of honey bees. They are stinging insects, and unlike bees their stinger does not detach after stinging, so they can inflict multiple stings should they need to. Only the females have a stinger.