Coral Polyp Study

Insect Behaviour - Fungus Gnat Larvae

This ugly critter looks like something out of star wars, but they are actually from New Zealand. This larvae of a type of fungus gnat is usually found in deep dark volcanic caves. They can also be found in trees that are generally in the dark. This is for protection against predators, but mainly for hunting. They catch thier food in the dark by making long silk threads and hanging them down with drops of sticky mucus. The waste the larvae produces has a chemical reaction with air and produces a bright blue light which attracts prey. These "cave glow worms" usually eat mayflies and other small flies, but they also eat snails, gnats (themselves as adults) and roaches. This finished copy took around 8 hours to complete using entirely PhotoShop CS2. Including the research, roughs, linears and colour studies it took about a month (well working on it like 2 hours a week)

Gastropod Structure

This black and white diagram shows the general topography of a gastropod shell. It was drawn from live reference using pen and ink and the labels were added in using Illustrator CS2.

Bird adaptations - Colouration

These illustrations show the adaptations of different bird colourations. They were drawn using lots of photographic references and some live reference. The media used for the illustrations were pencil for the line drawings and then they were coloured digitally in Photoshop CS2 (with an Intuous 3 drawing tablet). The total amount of time that went into this... I didn't keep a log, but i'd say around 35hrs (including research, thumbnails, rough sketches, line drawing, colouring and printing)

Bird anatomy (black vulture - landing position)

This drawing was done in pencil and labelled digitally. The vulture and its landing postures were drawn using alot of photo references.