BeetleSpider's Web

[BeetleSpider]

Hi all.

I like to draw with dip pens and India ink mostly, though I have started working digitally too recently. I also like painting sometimes too.

 I'm a hobbyist really, I like to draw stuff like monsters and animals as well as comics. That said, I want to get better with studying fundamentals of drawing so I thought this would be a good place to get critique. 

Here's a few recent samples of my work to start off. Any advice on things you think could be improved for now would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[darktiste]

If you want to see if your hatching is going in the right way try to put less dark around your figure in the background and let the hatching show the form.If you follow the form with hatching you can create the illusion of volume.If you apply straight line over a ball what happen?You flatten the ball.If you put hatching that follow the curved nature of that ball you get a sphere.

[neopatogen]

Hey welcome Beetlespider! 
Great to see another person who appreciates insects here!
As for fundamentals that could help you to be more confident drawing insects, especially with ink, I'd recommend checking out https://drawabox.com/lessons . But better start with first lessons before jumping into insect one, you won't regret it :) They also have a Discord server where everyone gets crits from the community pretty quickly.
Top creature is pretty cool, I think you could make an interesting full body design based on that :)

[BeetleSpider]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll check out that site, I have used it before but it'll be good to go over it again more thoroughly. 



Here's another piece I did last night.

[darktiste]

I think in the future it could be important to add the mention w.i.p (work in progress to certain of your post)
.Because i cannot give an opinion on something if i don't consider the stage of progress it at.For example i cannot give advise posible direction to a piece if the piece is already done.If it a finish piece i got a lot more freedom to critic what is presented but if it a work in progress a certain restrain should be use since alot of the work is still missing the work can also be sloppy just to be more expressive or to put idea on the paper as to brainstorm rapidly about the composition of the element in the scene.So yeah it important to let other know the stage your at in your drawing.

Right now the leak of background lead me to think you do not know enough about perspective so you decide to use blank dark back ground.If i was you i would take neopatogen advise and go to https://drawabox.com/lessons in the long run it will help your figure more 3d since you will be able to anchor down you figure to the ground .

[Artloader]

Hey BeetleSpider! Welcome to Crimson Daggers :).

I like your painting of the big beetle.

Great advice from Neopatogen and Darktiste on drawabox.com. I need to go back there and revisit that stuff myself :).

Looking forward to more from you.

[BeetleSpider]

Thank you Darktiste and Artloader. I'll certainly get to work on some DrawaBox exercises when I get the time to do so. I should probably put emphasis on the fact that I'm very much a hobbyist, but I certainly want to get better at my craft. I only say that because looking at other people here, I get that a lot of others here want to make it professionally (which I'm certainly not decrying, it's just not for me). 

Anyway, expect to see some drawing exercises soon. For now here's a digital study and some other drawings from recently.

[chubby_cat]

Hey, welcome to CD!
I don't have any crit that doesn't echo what everyone else says, but I would suggest studying artists who do cross hatching. Hatching can be amazing to look at. If you want to continue down that path, have a look at artists like Franklin Booth. He may not have done creatures and monsters, but seeing all the combined hatching techniques in his pieces is very inspiring.

[BeetleSpider]

Thanks for the suggestion! I am familiar with his work but I've been giving it another look.

I need to get my behind into gear with the DrawaBox exercises, but for now here's a couple of further drawings.

[BeetleSpider]

Here's a couple more things.

I started doing the DrawaBox exercises on lines and planes.



Also, here's a digital piece I did recently.

[BeetleSpider]

Here's a study I just finished. I was consciously trying to use the techniques of ghosting and drawing with your arm rather than from your wrist, which I learnt from DrawaBox.

[neopatogen]

Good work, have you joned Drawabox Discord btw? People are super helpful there. Your lines from the excercise are still a bit wobbly but you'll get better with time! And I think correcting /chicken scratching lines is not allowed (not contributing to confidence). But anyway hope you're having fun with these.
That flower's center looks like a view into another universe :P