Stag beetle ink drawing process

Over the past few days I have been drawing beetles for my forthcoming beetles and bugs collections here at AWdesigns.

The stag beetle is one of the most well known beetles due to its big pincers at the front, this is the Lucanus capreolus, it has a deep red colour unlike the more common black species (colour version coming soon as well as the more well known Lucanus cervus) 

This took about 6 hours to complete and I used two pigment, archival black ink pens. The Steadtler pigment liner 0.05 and the Pigma Micron 01 

So... what do you think?! Let me know and I would love to have suggestions for other cool beetles or bugs to draw. 

The next stage of the journey is to bring these beetles to life by placing them in environments and creating pattern. They are impressive as stand alone images but pull down the scale and repeat to make abstract or geometric patterns, add a splash of colour ... then the fun begins :-) watch this space...