Two useful pieces of advice from Agathe Haevermans’ Drawing and Painting the Seashore:
- If you’re drawing a bivalve shell life size, start by drawing the outline around the shell
- Position yourself so that the light is coming from the top left, throwing a shadow to the right and below the shell
- The shape of the shadow helps explain the shape of the shell – whether it’s convex or concave
This mussel shell is encrusted with keel worm tubes. This is the left shell valve. The beak of the shell (top) is the anterior or front end from which the mussel’s foot emerges the its siphon emerges from the posterior end, at the bottom of my drawing.