Poject 3a

I chose to do ladybugs. I first found several pictues on the internet from various angles, like the color one here, then changed them to grayscale.
I then did several tracings of different angles on some tracing paper. This was rather difficult for me for two reasons. First, due to my MS and compression of my spinal cord my hands are weak and difficult to control, especially when I use them for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. Also, I am legally blind, and it is difficult to see around my central blind spot to trace. I tried putting it on my CCTV reader to see my work larger, but it was impossible to see the image through the tracing paper sufficiently with the bright light of the reader shining on it. Ultimately, I enlarged the grayscale images and did my best. Here's the result. I stopped when my hands wouldn't work well enough anymore. That image is to the right of the photos above.
Finally I started reducing the images. I actually made a circular ladybug with head and leg details first, but it didn't look right to me. I made and oblong, which was more realistic, but I felt it was not simplified enough. Finally, I decided a circular shape was the way to go. I didn't include legs because they aren't major recognition factors for a ladybug. Also, in many photos the legs weren't visible at all. I shortened the thorax and head down to a black half-circle. This kept some pleasing symmetry, and again, in many pictures the thorax and head were barely visible under the shell. I did keep the white "v" at the edge of the shell where the head came out. I felt this gave a bit of simple detail that made the image just a touch more realistic and pleasing to the eye. I also noted in the pictures that ladybut spots can be many or few (even nonexistent in some cases) but they are always symmetrical. I chose a medium number of dots and did my best to make them symmetrical. I made two final versions: one with antennae and one without. The antennae were not visible on most photographs, but I think the reduced image is better with antennae than without.

A side note: the best part of this assignment was that as I was working on my ladybug drawings, my son ( age five ) and daughter (age three) both decided to make their own ladybug drawings. I think theirs may even be better than mine. :)