Anyone else like drawing insects?
3yr
Dan B
I certainly do. I find it difficult though to find insect artists and that a lot of them do 'natural history' style directly from above flat drawings. I love charcoal and expressive linework, but much as I enjoy drawing wasps and little insects, I struggle for ideas to expand on other than just drawing from reference :( If anyone has any resources for insect drawing or for how to do creature design etc from insects I'd love to know about them :) Here's some digital charcoal sketches I did tonight of some wasps I've photographed.
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Dan B
I really want to pick up the pace in my insect drawings, been terrible lately.
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Yiming Wu
Nice! is this a kind of bee or a mosquito? Because mosquito is a big problem here where I live XD
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Harmony Steel
Your insect drawings are great Dan and I love how you annotate them as well šŸ‘ are you familiar with the work of natural history illustrators the Scott sisters? Theyā€™re not only a great inspiration but it might give you some ideas for backgrounds and things if that is something youā€™re after - https://australian.museum/learn/collections/museum-archives-library/scott-sisters/ Personally I definitely enjoy painting moths and butterflies and bees šŸ
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Dan B
Thanks Harmony! Yeah I'm familiar with the Scott sisters, their work is amazing, especially how well they did the colouring. I definitely need ideas for backgrounds, I struggle with the broader composition ideas and environments to build the wasps into :( Some more attached, though accidentally drew the first few upside down in the sketch book :p
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Dan B
Some more sketching and studying, might turn this into a challenge for myself...
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Răzvan C. Rădulescu (razcore-rad)
Drawabox (https://drawabox.com/lesson/4) has a chapter on insects, though the stuff there isn't design, it's just capturing the references right. Which is the first step in doing design so it's still pretty relevant. Insects specific tutorials... don't know of. I know that at ArtWod (https://artwod.com/) they have lessons on the organic matter which includes insects and plants and all that. And one of their strategies is to come up with a unique design after learning the subject matter, but there isn't anything specific on insects, more like each week there's a different subject or something like that :)
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Serena Marenco
I really like the physical structure of insects, very useful as a cue to create fantastic creatures. I usually take my own photos: you can find great varieties of insects locally. Natural history museums are a great resource for study (Yesterday, having a quick look, I thought that the collection of the Natural History Museum in London can be visited virtually). If I happen to find dead insects on hikes or walks I keep them in a dry box. For the study you can search for high resolution videos on Youtube. Some time ago I happened to see some very high resolution videos made by a photographer specialising in wasps and hornets, which are very useful for studying behaviour and details.
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Dan B
The University of British Columbia has a fantastic digital specimen library (Spencer Entomological collection), which I've used a few times (The Lane collection has heaps of photos of insects too, but I haven't gone through them yet). https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/entomology/ They've taken photos of a huge amount of insect specimens from multiple angles, though it's not always the best because the specimens degrade, are incomplete or are discoloured, but the breadth is impressive. Thanks for the tip on videos, I hadn't really thought of that (and hadn't had much luck ages ago when I did look). I'll definitely look for that wasp photographer! It's especially hard to get photos in flight, so video will really help with that.
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@jdn
3yr
you know i never really tried to do any bugs or insects. but when ever i see them drawn im always highly impressed. because you're right not a lot of people do those kind of drawing's . btw i love you're drawings & i cant believe that there all digital. šŸ˜„šŸ‘ keep it up im sure that you will find an answer to you're problems. šŸ˜‰āœŒ
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Yiming Wu
Oh Damn you captured the material so well! I don't live in a place where there are a lot of insects other than freaking ugly annoying mosquito :c even if they are those bigger ones with stripes that might at least look better... Do you draw from those dead samples or from living ones? and you must got good eyes ;D
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Dan B
Thanks! You sometimes just have to look very closely at things, lots of insects (like the wasps above) are easily missed or seem to just be gnats or flies... Mozzies suck, but the similar crane flies are odd but interesting insects. These are drawn from photos of living wasps that I took in my garden. Too small to see the details with the naked eye so luckily I've got a macro lens :D
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