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Where the previous lesson focused primarily on flowing flat shapes as they push through all three dimensions of space, this lesson is going to set its sight on conveying the solidity of constructed forms, and combining them to create complex objects.
We also look at techniques that can be used to imbue insects' legs with solidity without causing them to appear too stiff as can often happen when employing constructional techniques too frivolously.
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Insects (and arachnids) are composed of three major components:
Head
Thorax
Abdomen
This holds true for the majority, though in some cases - like in beetles, spiders, and so on - you'll find that the head and thorax are fused. Despite this, you can still visually separate these elements fairly easily.
The other significant point to note is that insects (and some arachnids) display a shape language focused around the triangle. This can be seen in the general shapes of their heads, the way their legs bend, etc. Triangles naturally tend to be more sinister and unsettling as shapes (while squares are solid and circles are cuddly). That is, however, a conversation for a much later lesson.
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It's not uncommon to see artists starting with a loose, vague sketch to explore their drawing before committing more firmly to their lines. That is not how we will be approaching things here. That's not to say it's not an entirely valid approach to drawing, just that what we're doing here is specifically an exercise in construction.
As mentioned in previous lessons, construction is accomplished in successive passes, starting dead simple and gradually adding more forms to build up complexity.
At no point are we ever 'sketching'. Instead, every single pass should end with forms that feel solid to you - not like flat shapes pasted on top of one another, or loose collections of strokes on the page. Think about how these forms relate to one another, and add contour lines where you feel these relationships or the illusion of form need to be reinforced.
Try to perceive these solid forms as real, weighty objects in a three dimensional world, and look beyond the fact that you're drawing on a piece of paper. The page is not a flat surface - it is a window into a boundless world.
While Drawabox is not about making "pretty pictures", we know that's what students are hungering for. Feel free to indulge that craving with the following course from our sponsor, New Masters Academy:
Drawing Insects, Tropical Animals, and Color Demonstration with Charles Hu
This lesson from Charles' Dynamic Sketching course explores insects with more of a focus on the creation of vibrant, lively depictions, using looser sketching to lay in beetles, grasshoppers, and mantises, before painting on top with a bold use of gouache. Where Drawabox uses insects as a tool to explore and develop your spatial reasoning skills, Charles' demonstrations dig deep into making beautiful drawings that really stand out.
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Before starting the homework, be sure to go through all of the demonstrations included in this lesson. I strongly recommend drawing along with them as well and following them closely when doing so. If you choose to, you can include your attempts at following the demos in your homework, but they should constitute less than half of your insect drawings.
Also, remember that this homework must be drawn from reference. When looking for reference, I recommend that you specifically look for those of a higher resolution. Google's image search tools allows you to limit your search to large images, and I recommend you take advantage of this.
To get you started, here is an album of hundreds of high-res images. There's also this wonderful album by Andreas Kay, a naturalist and photographer who sadly passed away from cancer in 2019. Additionally, this gallery by Alex Wild was suggested by Lars Barnabee.
The homework assignment for this section is as follows:
2 pages of organic forms with contour curves, just like from lesson 2
4 pages of insect/arachnid drawings that are purely constructional with no texture or detail.
6 pages of insect/arachnid drawings that can go into texture and detail if you wish.
All the assigned work for this section should be done in ink, using fineliners/felt tip pens as described here. You may also use a brush pen to fill in dark areas, but not for your linework.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
Having your work reviewed by others is critical, as those who are just starting out aren't in a position to properly judge their own work, and won't be for quite some time. Don't be afraid to show your struggles - it's by analyzing your mistakes that we can help you grow. Perfect homework is not what we're looking for; we just need it to be complete.
There are currently two places you can get your work critiqued by the community - Reddit and our Discord Chat Server.
Both of these are completely free.
If you are interested in receiving extra help, I critique the work of those who support Drawabox on Patreon.
All of these private critiques are done through reddit, in specific threads where students post their work as a comment, including a link to their work (often hosted on Imgur, though most image hosts are okay).
My requirements are more strict than the free community critiques:
The minimum pledge for this lesson is $10.00/month. The orange button above will take you to the reddit thread for this lesson, you can post a link to your work there and I'll be notified. Once I catch the submission, I'll add it to this backlog spreadsheet.
Pledges are collected at the beginning of the following month, but you may start submitting your work immediately. If you're a new patron, I'll be reaching out to your shortly to collect your reddit username.
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