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Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids
Informal Demos
The demos here have been drawn in the course of a student's homework critique, but contain information that can be useful to all working through this material.
Shrimp construction
Sticking to the trend of looking at more crustaceans, this is a demo I did for a student. It's based on a mixture of the student's own drawing and some other reference images, so I'm not sure if it's actually all that accurate to real shrimp - but the focus here is ultimately on how we can take simple forms and combine them, defining how they relate and intersect in 3D space, and building upon them in much the same way to work towards an overall more complex result.
Lobster construction
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.
Additive construction and using silhouettes
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.
Cricket's abdominal segmentation
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.
The turning of form
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.
Identifying texture
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.
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)
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.