drawing stag beetles with Wild Life Drawing

We lived in Dorset for a few years when I was younger, and I remember Sunday afternoon walks in the heathland woods that are–were–so common in that part of England when I was growing up. Large anthills with huge wood ants guarding their pine needle fortresses; ferns and bracken in the cool shade beneath the trees; small streams cutting through the sandy soil. Only a few counties west from where I live now in East Sussex, but the geological underpinning of the Wealden anticline with its clay blanket over chalk gives a very different landscape here, and one that is less suited to stag beetles, one of my favourite insects. I used to see them frequently, where they seemed even more enormous and impressive in the eyes of my 8 year-old self. I don’t remember seeing one in Sussex, and we moved here in the 1980’s. They do have a stronghold in Dorset, and a few pockets here and there, but they are becoming increasingly common in urban areas, as the larvae eat dead wood and the practice of putting down woodchip as mulch, and forgotten fallen trees or logpiles in allotments, cemeteries and other low-traffic areas can provide an excellent refuge for the long-lived larvae. Taking 4 to 5 years to develop, depending on the weather and temperature, the thumb-sized grubs then pupate before emerging as adults, where they hunker down until conditions are favourable to take flight and find a mate.

Those of you who follow the blog will know what a fan I am of these brilliant drawing sessions, and being given a set of images to focus on, and the chance to put aside 90 minutes to create artwork while listening to questions is great. We started with some quickfire sketches of the reference photos to get the idea of shape and proportion of our subject, then we worked on our own while Laura sketched a beetle live as a follow-along for those who wanted some guidance.

For my main picture, I decided on some gouache, and chose a reference picture of a male stag beetle on some raspberries: