Check Out NMA    Learn More About our Partnership
Close and Enjoy Drawabox Ad-free

Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids

3:41 PM, Tuesday May 4th 2021

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/MyMD3vL.jpg

Post with 13 views.

I must admit: I didn't understand much about the shadows on the ground. In essence, yes, in practice ... less. But I'm sure I'll get there

And the bees and moths are cute

Report
2 users agree
6:58 PM, Tuesday May 4th 2021

Organic Forms: Look pretty nice and even, but the first page should also be curves and not ellipses.

Insects overall look good and your sausage forms are again evenly spaced. Construction is evident and your cast shadows stick to the forms well.

-The contour line on the black widow on the top of page 4 seems slightly misaligned with regards to the overall shape of the form. I think it should either aim slightly towards the left, or your abdomen should be made a bit smaller around the left side.

  • You could place some ellipses between the thin and thick front legs of the scorpion to make it look more 3D. While the forms are good, they do look a bit flat relative to the angle of the picture. Putting an ellipse in between this space helps convey the perspective.

-The wings on the top insect on page 9 don't seem to have much flow to them, particularly the left one. They feel a bit stiff and don't seem to show any evidence of construction applied to them. Starting out with a simple wide ellipse or flowing center line and working from there might help in making it feel more fluid.

  • Some of your insects could benefit from some additional line weight, particularly the front legs of the insects in your first five pages and the abdomen of the ladybug, black widow and housefly. This will help make them look more solid and let them properly stand out in relation to the rest of the body.

Besides these issues I think your insects are constructed nicely and you should be ready to move on.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
4:11 PM, Wednesday May 5th 2021

My english is bad. Hope the translator translates correctly.

thanks for writing to me and for the criticisms. I misunderstood the first exercise, he will mean that I will do it before starting lesson 5.

thanks for the various suggestions, including inserting some ellipses to make some parts look more 3D (as you said in particular the legs on which the sausages look flat) and as for the wings of the moth, I'm not particularly satisfied too how they came. They are a bit messy and they came too flat, despite the fact that they are still wings. Making the tongenating "bone" with the countourn lines and hooking the membrane as thin as a leaf could be more effective.

I will also be more attentive to the weight of the line, something that I still have to work on a lot.

Thanks again for writing to me, I'll try to pay attention to these suggestions for the future.

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.
PureRef

PureRef

This is another one of those things that aren't sold through Amazon, so I don't get a commission on it - but it's just too good to leave out. PureRef is a fantastic piece of software that is both Windows and Mac compatible. It's used for collecting reference and compiling them into a moodboard. You can move them around freely, have them automatically arranged, zoom in/out and even scale/flip/rotate images as you please. If needed, you can also add little text notes.

When starting on a project, I'll often open it up and start dragging reference images off the internet onto the board. When I'm done, I'll save out a '.pur' file, which embeds all the images. They can get pretty big, but are way more convenient than hauling around folders full of separate images.

Did I mention you can get it for free? The developer allows you to pay whatever amount you want for it. They recommend $5, but they'll allow you to take it for nothing. Really though, with software this versatile and polished, you really should throw them a few bucks if you pick it up. It's more than worth it.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.