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Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids

1:14 AM, Wednesday October 20th 2021

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Ok, Lesson 4, finally. It has been the hardest lesson until now for me, and I think it shows. There are some mistakes I catched: irregular/wobbly sausages, center alignment sometimes is all over the place, and the line weight is inconsistent. Also, I tried some texture with a bug, did not finish it and did not try it again.

I'll be totally fine with drawing ten bugs more. Jesus, make it twenty. I don't feel ready at all for the next lesson :P

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9:15 PM, Sunday October 31st 2021

Hello, Aeshnabx:

I know it's a tough lesson but wait for the followings because each step is harder than the previous hahaha. Think of it like the path of the warrior/ninja/hero, you realise the size of the incoming problems because you are strong enough to recognize your weaknesses! You improve with every step you make, and that's what's important here.

Now let's begin with the review:

Sausages

Your lines seem wobbly and the inner line is usually decentered. This could be because you tried to rush over it and not prepare each stroke enough. I have struggled with sausages and organic forms too and the best advice on this I can give is to play with the speed of the stroke on the inner ellipses and warm up drawing some sausages every session until you gain at least some confidence and stop drawing with wobbling lines.

Inner ellipses become crazy on one end. The goal is to make the stroke like a broken ellipse. Most sausages have ellipses that have no symmetry along the minor axis, having a notable difference in width between the two edges. This is a problem that has a big impact and will affect everything you build on top.

Remember than smooth and confidence lines are the #1 top priority on every exercise.

Insects

Most of your insects lack of the 3D illusion. It breaks because of the problem I have mentioned earlier and problems related to the basic forms. The Initial construction of the head, torso and thorax is good. Better than mine by a lot. The problem arises after you start building on top of that foundation:

  • The legs have an obvious problem as they are sausages and sausages are problematic the smaller they are. The fix for these is to improve on sausages. They are inconsistent and wobbly but they are where they should be. Good planning and structure but lack of execution.

  • The forms wrapping around the foundation feel plain. I think this is related to the problem with the inner ellipses on your sausages because you do the same in both occasions: The line stop curving when it reaches its end and that destroys the depth illusion it could give. Revisit the ellipses and sausages exercise descriptions for an in-depth description. Basically, you have to draw the lines as if they were to continue after you stopped and that should match with the original form.

  • Details can be a hassle, but you have to draw them and give them the focused attention they deserved. If not, your drawings will gain a sketchy feeling similar as when doing wobbly lines. When you are drawing repetitive details, like fur, hair and that kind of textures, you have to be conscious of every instance of it you draw. Every time you have drawn it; you did it in a repetitive way as if you wanted to finish an entire leg textured with a single stroke without raising the pen above the page. Also, you only added texture along the silhouette but not inside the body. This is specially problematic in hairy insects like your tarantula where it has too much hair around it but it's completely bald inside its contour. Also, there are surfaces without any texture or shadow detail at all like the wings.

  • Do not use straight lines to shadow (like in the grasshopper leg) because it destroys any 3D illusion you had built. Think of it, we use ellipses to give sausages a stronger 3D illusion. By using straight lines you are doing the complete opposite. Also you should use darker regions to practice shadows and textures. If you avoid those areas, you are not going to practice it nor improve on it.

  • You are not using line weight enough and there are critical parts in some of the insects that needs them. The best example of this is all of the wings you have drawn. Most of them are almost invisible and feel part of the foundational forms instead of the details built on top. Line weight is a tool that allows you to communicate which lines are on top, use it wisely. You don't need to cover an entire line with it, just the section that crosses other lines (the end of the wings is usually alone, out of the main group of lines, so it doesn't need more line weight to represent that it's at the top of others).

Veredict

As you wished I'm going to request a revision. Not as much of a grind as you wanted thought:

First warm a bit doing some ellipses and sausages to get the feeling of how to do it and experiment a bit without the pressure of having to present a "homework" page. Play around, test multiple strategies and when you feel confident enough go with the exercise. Do not expend more than 30 minutes doing that, is just a warming exercise after all.

2 more pages of sausages. Try to make confident lines and inner ellipses with consistent edges.

3 more insects. Repeat the tarantula, the beetle and the grasshopper. In that order if possible.

I hope the feedback helps you can reach me here or in discord with any doubts.

Next Steps:

2 more pages of sausages. Try to make confident lines and inner ellipses with consistent edges.

3 more insects. Repeat the tarantula, the beetle and the grasshopper. In that order if possible.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
3:12 PM, Monday November 1st 2021

Hi! Thanks for the critique. About this:

Do not use straight lines to shadow (like in the grasshopper leg) because it destroys any 3D illusion you had built.

I did that because in a couple of demos, it was mentioned that it was useful to make the rest of the drawing stand out, but I guess it was on the older ones. I will not do it again :P

Also, about detail, there's definitely some things that I don't get yet. Like, look, I made this (it's just a quick drawing, didn't apply the corrections yet). I can see that there is a curvature to the shell, and the little dots are definitely cast shadows, I tried to replicate that with the shading. But the rest, the big black sections that I painted, although they try to follow the contour, they are more like a reflection than anything else, right? Should I do that, or should I just omit it and do it like here?

This other example confuses me as well, because, wouldn't some of that clumping count as more of a reflection than anything? It would make sense that way, because almost all of the insects are reflective thanks to the exoskeletons, but again, I'm not sure about it.

Also, do you have something on how to draw detail for things like wings? I honestly can't see how to do it, especially with things like the damselfly wings, that are very translucent and like the only thing that's happening there is the pattern they have.

If you can help me with that, I'll be most thankful. Meanwhile, I'll workn on the homework and then get back to you. It may take a while though, I'll work slow to make sure everything is right.

4:08 PM, Monday November 1st 2021

About the textures. The things you ink are always shadows or darker areas, which happens in all examples you linked. The thing is that depending on how you use them, you can generate different effects. For example, inking the inside of a mouth is a representation of complete darkness but the shadows in a shell that is completely exposed to light communicate that even the light should reach there, it isn't reflecting the light in the viewer's direction. That's why you can confuse it with reflections.

Knowing how and when to use the shadows well comes from experience and I struggle a lot with it too so maybe you can get more tips from other students on discord. Also remember that this course's focus is on construction and general structure, texture, and details are a world on their own. Don't worry too much about it, just try to apply the little things that you can, the rest will come with experience or another course you could try in the future.

About the hatching. The problem is not the hatching on its own, is what you communicate with it. As described in the notes you linked, when you use shadows in organic shapes, they should follow the form they are wrapped on. The problem with the hatching in the grasshopper is that you are using a hatching pattern thought for planes in a cylinder shape. It could work in flat shapes like the face of a box or the surface of an arrow (where you probably saw it before) but as it is a flat surface shadow if you use it on an organic surface an inconsistency for the viewer will arise between the 3D form the sausage is suggesting and the 2D form the hatching is suggesting. That's the problem I see with it. In general, hatching is not recommended (just on specific exercises) to avoid this kind of confusion.

About the wings, you have to take in mind that light passes through transparent materials but it would have problems passing through veins, rigid structures, and so on. Those kinds of things are the patterns you see in the wings of some insects. Play around with them, try some that you guess they won't let the light pass through them, and see if that works.

It's difficult sometimes to tell a "good way" to draw something and you are going to have to investigate and research how could you make it work for you. Also, you can check how other students approached it and see if you could replicate something they are using in your drawings.

I hope it helps. Don't worry about being slow, drawing takes time, and having constant pacing will benefit you in the long run.

10:25 PM, Sunday November 14th 2021

Hi! Took me quite a while. Here they are.

I understood what you meant with your critiques, and hopefully it shows (especially on the sausages, the practice ones were better than the actual homework). However, I can't say I'm satisfied with the execution, especially with that grasshopper. I sent the references as well, and that grasshopper is just a mess of forms overlapping each other. I'll be waiting for your critique!

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