Worms
Summary:
How to draw a worm. Mathematically, a worm is traced out by a sphere moving along a curve. This is called a “canal surface”. To draw a canal surface, we need to know how to draw and shade outlines, cusps, and tori. I present a method to derive the shading of a canal surface by the shading of a reference sphere. See the worksheet (which I didn’t yet finish oops)
🔗 Link to file
Part of Drawing Club at the IHP trimester in illustrating mathematics.
First, everyone drew tori and placed them into the center of the table. Then, we looked at their similarities and differences. Dispice the vast multitudes of tori, seen below, all tori have the “smile”. This is hole in the center, where one side of the hole extends past the other. We discussed what this is meant to represent, and where it comes from.
Many tori
By many people (photo credit Edmund Harris)
Next, we followed an algorithmic approach to draw the outline of a tours. Using a circular template, we can trace the offset curve of our guiding curve. The “smile” is a cusp of the offset curve. We used the shading of a reference sphere to compute the shading of the fattened curve, producing a worm.
Reference banana
I bought these banana toys, which reshaped while holding their form. We used these as models.
Worm - Alba Málaga
Shaded with my technique. It's quite tedious (photo credit Edmund Harris)