Notes For Drawing (and Writing) Insects

Notes for drawing (and writing) insects

I do something like this almost yearly and it feels like it gets a little longer every time!

Personally I draw either cartoony stuff or hybrid monsters where none of this is mandatory, but here are some of the things I sometimes see missing or inaccurate in insect artwork that was meant to be lifelike, and even if you only do alien, monster or cartoon arthropods, or you don’t make art at all, you might still like to know some of these things!

First off, an insect leg pretty much always has 9 segments. #1, the coxa, is what attaches it to the body and can be a short little “ball” or a whole long piece, but almost always bends DOWN. The last five segments are almost always very short, forming a super flexible “foot” or “tarsus” ending in a set of claws and sticky pads. All spiders have this “foot” as well!

The foot is even still present on the claws of a preying mantis - growing right out of the “sickle” like this, and still used as feet when the mantis walks around or climbs. Basically ONLY CRABS have limbs ending in simple points!

Insects don’t just have side-to-side mandibles at all, but an upper and lower set of “lips” like a duck bill! In some, however, these parts can be very small or even fused solid.

Insects also typically have four “palps” on their head, an upper and lower pair, which evolved from legs and are used to handle food!

Most *FLYING* insects have ocelli, single-lens eyes in addition to their multi-faceted compound eyes! Some flightless insects can also have them but it depends on the species.

All legs and wings are always attached to the thorax!

Caterpillars still have six legs! They’re very small and up near the head. All the other “legs” are actually just suckers on its underbelly.

You will be forgiven for never drawing this but this is how many parts a mosquito’s mouth actually has. Every piece you can find in another insect’s mouth - the “upper lip,” the mandibles, the palps, etc. - are all present as different needles and blades!

The word “bug” originally referred only to one group of insects, the hemiptera, including stink bugs, assassin bugs, aphids, cicadas, bed bugs and water striders to name a few. One distinguishing feature of this group is that it did away with all those separate mouth parts - all “bugs” have just a single, hollow “beak” or “proboscis” to feed through!

The vast majority of insect groups have wings or at least members with wings, and all insects with wings have  FOUR of them…..except that in beetles, the front wings evolved into solid, protective shields for the hind wings, and in true flies (which includes mosquitoes!) the hind wings evolved into tiny little knobs with weights on the end, called halteres, which the fly’s fast-paced brain uses to feel its orientation, altitude, speed, surrounding air pressure and other fine data making them quite possibly the most advanced aerial navigators on the planet. OTHER NOTES THAT DON’T NEED ILLUSTRATION:

Insects and other arthropods HAVE TRUE BRAINS in their heads, made of brain cells like ours. They can learn, memorize, and make decisions.

Insects do have males and females and obviously only females lay eggs. Fiction is always getting this wrong, but I guess it also does so with birds so whatever.

Of insects, only termites, ants, some bees and some wasps have fully evolved a eusocial colony structure with “queens” as we think of them. Of these, the termites are actually highly specialized cockroaches, and the rest (bees, ants, wasps) are the same exact group.

The scrabbling, clicking noise associated with insects is usually added artificially in nature footage for dramatic effect. While their movements likely emit some sort of sound, it’s probably no “louder” proportionately than, say, the sound of a cat’s fur as it walks. In other words it should not be noticeable; what kind of animal survives as a species if it clatters with every step??

Compound eyes do not see a bunch of identical little images. There is no advantage to any organism seeing that way. An insect sees one big picture just like you do.

Only some insect groups have “larvae.” Others have “nymphs” which resemble fully grown but wingless insects.

The only insects with a venomous bite are some true bugs and some flies. There are no beetles or roaches or wasps or anything else that inject offensive toxins through their mouth parts, as far as I know!

The only insects that lay eggs inside other insects parasitically are certain wasps and flies. There are also NO arachnids that do this.

Only certain bees, wasps and ants have stingers on their abdomens. These are modified from egg laying appendages, so it’s also only ever the females.

The only other kind of “sting” in any insect is a venomous hair or spine, mostly seen in caterpillars.