Let's Draw Some Animals! (with Boedromios and S!R)

[longshao]

Mentor--longshao
Mentee--Boedromios and S!R, for now

Alright guys, this is the official start of my mentorship. The goal is to learn more about animal anatomy and use that knowledge when designing your own creatures. I will be giving out exercises for you guys to follow, and we'll be having group discussions and critiques when the work is handed in. I'll be doing some of the assignments as well, to share my learning experience.

It's will be important to study through all groups of animals, living or exict, even plants. Knowing a thing or two about each group of animals will help you come up with a greater varity of creature concepts. We will start with invertebrates and work our way up the evolutionary tree. We'll be focused more on vertebrates, since they tend to have more complicated body plans. You will be doing both live drawings and working from photo references. Specific exercises are yet to be fully designed.

I would also like to mention that Moai, a good fellow artist has started a mentorship like this. So if you are willing and time allows, you could also be following some of his assignments and discussions. More practice wouldn't hurt. :teeth: I'll be following that thread as well, so you are welcome to post some extra stuff in this thread and I'll be happy to give you some of my thoughts.

Finally, the first "Assignment":

1. Do a brief introduction of yourself.
2. List two animal(s) that you like to draw. It can be two species or two groups of animal. But be rather specific, at least down to "family" level. For example: I like to draw cats (from lions to kitties) and great white shark.
3. Post two creature concepts of your own, that you believe best reflects your skill level as of now.
Boedromios--I see you don't have a sketchbook thread? Please start one in the sketchbook forum so we can all view your work more easily.

It shouldn't take much time. Oh and I'll introduce myself.
My name is Kevin Yan. I am a freelance illustrator just out of school. I hope to become a concept artist someday, but I don't have what it takes yet. I like drawing animals a lot, especially dinosaurs. I used to draw them everyday.

OK folks, that's it for now, hope to hear from you soon.

[Julie G]

Okay, I'm hoping it's alright to post now...

I'm Cel online or Julie offline. I'm a freshmen at Syracuse University and I'm going to be doing illustration there. For now I'm just taking two drawing classes. When I grow up I want to be an animator. I know that's a lot of people too and I can draw them, but that's also what most of my classes are going to focus on it seems.
I'm a big fan of drawing cats as I usually use an ocelot as my symbol. I'd say I like to draw dogs as the next real animal or dragons if we're including unreal.

Attached are the best examples I have on the computer. I'm quite ashamed that I didn't have any better ones, but for the most part I focus on real animals, or at least that's what I have scanned in (I'll see if I can borrow a friend's scanner tonight). The first one is a species of my own design that I give out on a silly little board, but hey, it's fun! I can tell the hips are a little off (okay a lot off, but a little off compared to the rest of my stuff!) and the whiskers are supposed to be floating - I really ought to add some sort of sparkle or something to show it's the result of magic, but on the board it's known that's when the whisker raise.
The mermaid may not be, strictly speaking, a creature, but it was, again, the best thing I had scanned in. Quite old, but basically I was trying to figure out what a mermaid might actually look like.
The last one is approximately of the same species, but a different subspecies or race within it. This one is basically adapted to live similarly to an otter with about 60% of it's time in the water. I probably need to rework it a bit as again, the it's old and was just left in my photobucket account. Sorry, sorry, sorry about the samples being on it! I'm quite embarrassed, but again, it was the only version I had because I recently switched computers. :\

[S!R]

Welcome Cel! I'm hoping to post my assignment this evening (at work right now). This will be an awesome thread i think. Mucho kudos to our Longshao mentor!

[Myrridin]

Hello, my name is Myrridin (which is celtic for my real name, Merlin). I'm 17 years old, I live in Belgium and I'm a happy, creative youngster and eager student (As far as drawing is concerned anyways). I want to be a 3D-modeller/concept artist,.. something along those lines.

I added a drawing of a horse that I drew from a ref. It's not that good, but it's the best I can do I think. I'll draw something else from imagination and add it in a little bit.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b386/Doserot/Pensil%20Drawn/Horse001.jpg

[Myrridin]

Here's the one without ref. These are just sketches since I'm not so well educated in the colouring aspect of things.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b386/Doserot/Pensil%20Drawn/Wolfish001.jpg

[Boedromios]

Hi,

My name is Miguel, I am 20 and been self-taught until now. Like I said, I like drawing animals and creatures, but I never seem to get it right and just end up throwing them in the trash without even coloring them. Which is why I had to draw the animals for this assignment and I even tried, at great cost :), to colour one, thought it was a very basic colloring as you will see. Because they were drawned for this assignment, they definetly reflect my current hability on drawing animals, which is very small :dad: .

I like to draw especially birds, mainly sparrows and sparrow-like birds, and either cats or rabitts/roedents, can't really decide which I prefer.

Edit: You can find my newly created sktechbook here (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108397)

http://www.portuskale.org/Ia.jpg

http://www.portuskale.org/Ib.jpg

PS: Please forgive my mistakes, I am not a very good English-speaker/writer

[longshao]

Excellent guys.
Now we all know a little more about each other.
celarania--Don't be embrassed, we are all hear to learn. I see you have a basic idea about cat anatomy. In your pencil sketches, there's only one invertebrate. I guess you don't think of them that much. But you'll need to learn about them to make more varied designs.
myrridin--Cool. But you didn't tell me what animals you like to draw. :D
Boedromios--I think you should focus on the basics before try to render some bizarre creatures.
To you who are doing to school and taking drawing classes, it will be very helpful to develop basic drawing skills at the same time, so it's an advantage over the self-taught.
To all of you: be very careful about shapes and proportion. That's what you need to get right if you want to draw realistic looking things, including anatomy studies.
Train yourself to be a better observer, a better craftsman, and a better thinker. I think we'll focus on the first two aspects. When drawing animals, look at the animal and try to find out the relationship (regarding position, shape, and proportion) between different body parts. Then try to reflect that accurately.
I will hand out the first research assignment later this week. Each of you will be assigned a topic, and we'll share the result in the end.

[S!R]

Sorry im late guys, wont be a habit.

My name is Sean/S!R. I am 36. Live in Seattle. I wanna be a pro concept artist at some point, but realize I am a long way off currently, and digging the journey to it.

To be honest I dont draw animal creatures all that much, I tend to stick toward weird humanesque chracters/creatures the most.

I would say (although none of the examples im providing illustrate it) I like to draw spidery or crab like creatures alot, something about all those legs just gets me..

(LS-decided to post newer stuff, instead of my SB images, hope thats cool)
Here's a couple scrawls from the last week or so...

I'm very much looking forward to seeing our progress with this...
So Longshao....let's have it!!
:)

Cheers guys (and gal)
S!R

[S!R]

Red rover, red rover, send an assignment right over! :)

[S!R]

Bump. I'm ready :)

[longshao]

Sorry for the delay guys; I finally put this whole thing together. COW 100 is finally over. I appreciate your enthusiasm S!R.

Lecture One
Insects

Invertebrates, as we all know, are animals without a spinal column. They make up the majority of animal species. Invertebrates are classified into the following group (phyla) s:

Porifera — sponges
Cnidaria — jellyfishes, corals, sea anemones, hydras
Ctenophora — comb jellies
Platyhelminthes — flatworms
Nematoda — roundworms or nematodes
Annelida — segmented worms (earthworms, leeches, polychaetes)
Echinodermata — starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers
Mollusca — squid, snails, octopus, bivalves
Onychophora — velvet worms
Arthropoda — insects, arachnids, crustaceans
Brachiopoda — lampshells
Bryozoa — moss animals or sea mats
Hemichordaata — acorn worms, graptolites

You don’t need to remember the scientific names of each group, I honestly don’t know what half of them are. However, some groups are more “useful” when it comes to creature design. Personally I find features of Molluscs and Arthropods are applied more frequently than others. Lecture one will discuss insects specifically.

All arthropods have exoskeleton, segmented bodies and appendages (legs, mouth parts, sexual organs, ect.). They breath with gills or through pores. Their blood, haemolymph, is copper based, which result it blue. When you draw them, remember that they are essentially connected shapes, they can only bend at the joints of segments.

Insects
Insects are a incredibly diverse group of animals. There are over a million known species, and it’s estimated that the number of current living species range from 6 to 50 million.

Basic Body Plan
1. Like all other arthropods, all insects have exoskeletons. An insect’s body has three basic parts: the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. The head supports two antennae, compound eyes and simple eyes, and a mouths, which is made up of three sets of appendages.
2. The thorax has three segments: prothorax, mesothorax, and metathorax. Each segment supports a pair of legs, and the later two can each support a pair of wings. All insects have only six legs as adults.
3. The abdomen is also segmented, and it contains digestive, respiratory, excretory, and reproductive internal structures.

Wings.
Insect wings are membranes supported by veins. More advanced insects have wings, which function fully only in adults.
Mouth
An insect’s mouth has four basic parts: the labium, labrum, mandibles, and maxillae. These parts are apparent in less modified mouths like the ones of grasshoppers. Other mouths are highly specialized due to feeding, like the straw-like mouth of a butterfly.

Development
1. A typical insect has four stages of development. It starts off as an egg, then hatches into a larva. The larva will grow into a pupa, sealed in a cocoon in some cases. The pupa will undergo drastic changes to become an adult.
2. Insect development involves metamorphosis and molting. Advanced insects like butterflies go through complete metamorphosis but many don’t. An insect must molt to grow bigger. During molting, an insect sheds its old exoskeleton and grows a new, bigger one.

There are many groups of insects. Due to the great variety, it’s not practical to have you guys study all groups at the same time. Rather, I will have each of you study and draw a few different groups of insects and share the results.

So here we go,
Assignment One
Each of you will draw 30 insects, or more if you like, in three weeks. I think it’s plenty of time. It’s kind of late to go out and observe insects in the northern hemispheres, so you’ll have to find a lot of images from books, and online resources. I’ve assigned several groups to each of you, the number is my suggestion of how many different species of types of each you should try to draw:

S!R:
Coleoptera (beetles) — 25
Siphonaptera (fleas) — 3
Mecoptera (scorpionflies) — 2
And if you like, draw some caddisflies. It’s not mandatory.

Celarania:
Hymenoptera (ants and bees) — 6 ants, 10 bees and kin.
Ephemeroptera (Mayflies) — 4
Odonata (dragonflies & damselflies) — 6
Embioptera (webspinners) — 2
Plecoptera (stoneflies) — 2

Myrridin
Diptera (flies) — 10
Isoptera (termites) — 5
Mantodea (mantis) — 5
Hemiptera (cicadas, shieldbugs, ect.) — 8, try to draw a few of each group.
Mantophasmatodea (gladiators) — 2

Boedromios
Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) — 14, try to draw 7 each.
Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets) — 7
Phasmatodea (stick insects) — 3
Dermaptera (earwigs) — 2
Blattodea (roaches) — 4

Note that I’ve given each of you a big diverse group to draw. All four of these groups are advanced insects that go through complete metamorphosis. So draw the larva and pupa of 5 different types each. If you cannot find that many let me know.

You are definitely welcomed to draw extras from other people’s lists. If there’s something that you think is just too disgusting to draw, let me know and we can change it. There probably are some you’ve never heard of, so do some research at the same time.

It would really be ideal to sketch from life. So I would encourage you to visit local museums, or insectariums, if possible. When doing your observation/drawings, please pay attention to the following questions:

1. What kind of general body shape does this insect have? Is it a flat cylinder like (cockroach), or semi-spherical like a ladybug?
2. Pay attention to the shape of separate body parts, eyes, limbs, abdomens, and wings. How do their smaller parts contribute to the full body shape?
3. Try to notice the segments within each body part and/or appendages. How many sections are there in a particular leg, or belly?
4. How are the sections connected to form the larger part? Is there exposed muscle like structure holding them together, or are they so closely connected that only the edges can be seen?
5. Pay attention to small details like the shape of separate mouthpiece, the structure and shape of the tips of the limbs, location of the simple eyes.
6. If you could observe them in locomotion, how are the legs bend? In what direction, and plane are the joint revolving? How are its feet touching the ground or holding onto a surface, how are the abdomens curling?
7. What’s the difference between an insect in a “relaxed” state and one that’s engaging in some kind of motion?

Focus on describing shapes and texture through your drawing first, don’t worry to much about colors yet. If you are doing in full color, then try to get the colors fairly accurate, but B/W sketches/drawings will do. Don’t hesitate to put down notes next to your drawings if you notice something interesting and worth mentioning. All medias are accepted.
I’ll be back to add a few images to the lecture.
This thing is due Nov. 25th.

[longshao]

I must admit, through some reseachs for COW and personal study, I find insects quite disgusting (no offense to bug lovers). Sometimes you have to ignore the goosebumps and keep drawing.

Good luck and have fun guys.

[Julie G]

Umm... just double checking - what do you mean draw the larva and pupas of each one? Do you mean for each bug we'll draw the life cycle or what do you mean?

Edit: Drat, I just noticed the date was right after Thanksgiving, meaning I'll have a webcam, but no scanner for a few days after. Is it alright if I get the nice scans after?

[S!R]

Yes, I reread the assignment once again after completing more then half before running into that portion. *yikes*

Longshao can you clarify a bit what you meant??
Thanks

[S!R]

Well I will be out of the country for the next 3 weeks on my honeymoon.

Don't hold up the others on my account.
Here's the 17 I've got done.

See you all on the next assignment, or I'll finish this in mid dec, your call boss.

[Julie G]

Congratulations! Have a wonderful time! (I'll add critique when it's not 1 in the morning and I still have an assignment to finish.)

[longshao]

S!R--Job well done so far. I see you getting progressivly better. I'll save the critique for the end. You are on the right track, keep going. And have fun on your honeymoon!

Celarania--you are in college right? When do you get out of school? Will you have problem finishing this by the current deadline? Late november/early december is end of semester so I could extend the deadline.

To you all, I think I'll extend the deadline to mid-december-ish. Still waiting for the other two guys to respond. So Boe and Myrridin if you read this, please give your thought and about the deadline, and do a small progress report, post an image or two.

On the larvae and pupa question:
Pick 3--5 spiecies from the largest group you are assigned to do and draw the larvae and pupa of them. It doen't have to be the ones you've studied among the 30. Just find 3--5 metamorphosis cases and draw them.

[Julie G]

longshao- yep, I'm a college girl. I should be alright with it. Closer to mid December I might disappear due to finals and such. Currently I have a master copy to work on and a couple of pages of an alphabet book, so I should be okay.

[Myrridin]

Holy hell! I sent you a PM. I'm back on track now, so I can start doing your assignments. I'll see what I can cook up by this weekend. I should have something done by then.

[S!R]

*bump* I'm back from the honeymoon and drawing my bugs again.

C'mon guys lets make this a classroom, i wanna see some images from you to help me keep the faith here...

:P

[S!R]

Ahem...anyone....Bueller.......Bueller?

[Myrridin]

Err,... About those bugs. I don't think I can make the deadline. I have a lot going on and whenever I'm drawing it's usually anatomy studies. Might have to drop out of this class, because apparently, I can't keep up. :S I'll do my best, to see what I can conjure up this weekend. You'll see by sunday.

[S!R]

:I'll see what I can cook up by this weekend. I should have something done by then.
:blahblah: :nohope:


Well something is better then nothing, you sayin you havent drawn a single one yet?