Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids

Here's a demonstration of using a lobster as the focus of a constructional exercise. Always remember - constructional drawing, and everything we do within this course, is just an exercise.

Furthermore, it is an exercise that requires immense patience and care. Students are often eager to rush forwards and to skip steps. Everything builds upon the structure laid down before it, and if there is not enough to support the complexity you wish to add, your construction will fall flat.

This demo focuses on how to apply additive construction (as opposed to using subtractive construction incorrectly by focusing on flat shapes rather than solid 3D forms). It also explores how you can imply the presence of top/side/front faces of an object through silhouette alone, and also how you can use that silhouette to demonstrate how one form wraps around one it is connected to, without the use of any internal edges being defined.

A lot of these insects feature various kinds of segmentation, especially on their abdomens. Pay close attention to how they overlap, and how they break the silhouette of the form in order to convey them as strongly and effectively as you can.

I often find that students have a tendency to flatten out crickets' abdomens, even when they do a great job with segmentation on other insects. Something about their bodies really lends themselves to it. Always think about how those layered segments of chitin conform around the underlying bodypart.

Simple overview of how I would have approached this spider. I don't believe I had the reference for this one, so I constructed it based on what the student's drawing conveyed.

Same as the above - using the student's drawing, I broke it down into its major forms and explained how I would have approached the construction.

One thing we get into more and more as we talk about construction and form is the idea of forms having clear distinctions between their various faces. The top, the side, the front, etc. Even when a form has a seemingly smooth transition here, think about where you would distinguish these planes, and where the surfaces turn.

While many students will drop in some hatching lines and call it done, I want to encourage you to look a lot closer at your reference image and identify the wealth of visual elements and information that are being conveyed there. Look closely, and you'll find that it's not quite as simple as you may have thought.