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Monday, October 28, 2024

Bugtober Weeks 3 and 4

I have been less industrious at my bug drawings for the past couple weeks, due to various factors — some out of town adventures, and I am currently working on a larger project that I've been planning for some time and is using up a lot of the time I have available for art. But! I've made some cool stuff.

First, a repeating pattern, which I made by hand but then cleaned up on the computer.

Black silhouettes of cockroaches, a lot of them in a pattern. White ink on black paper.

The same cockroaches, but smaller and with higher contrast.

Same image as previous, but a rectangle is highlighted in the middle to show where the original pattern was and how it repeats.

Next I saw a tutorial for these flippy things, called a "flexagon". I wanted to see if I could reproduce these the way you would a zine, i.e., by printing out a sheet and then putting it together. It took some trial and error, but I started by drawing on this template that I made:

Four drawings of a mosquito at various life stages. On the top row are the pupa stage and the adult laying eggs stage, which are both black ink on white paper. The bottom row is the larva stage and adult emerging stage, white ink on black paper. Around the edges of the paper are notes, registration marks, and the text for each stage.

And then with some photo editing software wizardry, I ended up with a printable sheet of paper, which you can download here. After a bunch of cutting, folding, and taping, I ended up with this:

A hexagonal paper craft with the previous mosquito drawings, and a person flipping through the four phases.

And then of course there's the regular onslaught of all the other bugs I drew.

Anna Tiger Moth

A cicada from the top, white ink on black paper.

A cicada from the side, sitting on a branch of wood, white ink on black paper.

Cicadas

Bed bugs

Harlequin Webworm

Rothschild's Birdwing

Darwin's Beetle

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