Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids
12:16 AM, Monday December 26th 2022
The folder includes the main reference pictures.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
2 users agree
1:14 AM, Thursday January 12th 2023
Hello Kittensmittens, I am going to be critiquing your submission.
Organic Forms With Contour Curves: These look pretty good and smooth. The problem is that you did not keep both ends of the sausage the same size. Imagen the sausage as if it were two identical balls connected by a tube. Sometimes, they swell up or become thinner in the tube part as well, which we don’t want. This picture might help: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/7f789bfa.jpg
Insect drawings:
These are pretty clean and well made!
The problems come on on the legs, where the lines tend to be a bit unconfident and wobbly and sometimes they have the same problems that your sausages did where they swell or contract. It also looks like in some spots you drew a line you weren't happy with, and then went over it again. Avoid doing this no matter how bad the initial line turns out. If what you were trying to do was add line weight to the legs, then remember that you only add line weight when the forms are overlapping and not on the outline. This goes for the entire bug, not just the legs.
They're are some times when you undermine the construction of your drawings. Take the head of the fire ant, for example. You cut through the initial form (the circle you drew) in order to make the pointed head of the ant. It is very difficult to cut through a 3d form and to have it still look 3d, as explained in this image.
https://i.imgur.com/VdwbRuU.png
You also have this issue in Hammonds lined june beetle, where you cut into the spheres that made up the thorax and abdomen of the beetle. With this drawing specifically, you also have a bit of trouble keeping all of you lines confident and not wobbly so look out for that too.
Always mass onto a form instead of cutting into it for the animals and insects you will draw. A very good example of how to construct an ants head this constructively way would be like this:
https://i.imgur.com/X4tx6KB.png
Your overall construction is pretty sparse, too. There are times you could have added more mass to objects to make it closer to the reference images, kind of like this:
These are things you can definitely still practice in lesson 5 though, so go ahead and move on!
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 5!
12:52 PM, Friday January 13th 2023
Hey! Thank you so much for the feedback! I think I've now to a degree grasped how to better add masses (and to some extent how to use extraction) after getting critique on it from a number of people. It took a hot minute to figure out what people were on about :D. I'll try to even more internalise these points going further.
Would you have any advice on what I could add to my warmup rotation or perhaps if I could work on something specific? If not that's also cool, and thank you again!
6:34 PM, Friday January 13th 2023
I think the next best step is to really pay attention to the construction for when you do your animal drawings, and do your best to work additively and just learn by doing. If you want something to work on that is more warm up-able though, you could practice doing the sausage exercise, but do long, thin sausages (like the insects leg) 1-3 times to help you make those less wobbly and inconsistent. The main thing will be to follow all the tutorials and do your best in lesson 5 though.
5:54 PM, Monday January 16th 2023
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Pentel Pocket Brush Pen
This is a remarkable little pen. Technically speaking, any brush pen of reasonable quality will do, but I'm especially fond of this one. It's incredibly difficult to draw with (especially at first) due to how much your stroke varies based on how much pressure you apply, and how you use it - but at the same time despite this frustration, it's also incredibly fun.
Moreover, due to the challenge of its use, it teaches you a lot about the nuances of one's stroke. These are the kinds of skills that one can carry over to standard felt tip pens, as well as to digital media. Really great for doodling and just enjoying yourself.