Step1
Reference photo Djinn by Vanessa Pike-Russell aka VanessaPR at eHow
Collect your materials and cut a piece of Stonehenge paper with substantial margins around an 8" square, lightly sketch the square with a grid ruler as a guideline for the picture area. You can use a T-square or parallel rule to mark up, or use a right triangle and ordinary ruler to get your dimensions accurate. Be sure the markup line width is outside the image area.
Study your photo reference in depth. It may help to do light graphite sketches of key details like the animal's eyes, shell shape with shadows, leg structure. Work on sketching from the reference photo until you are very familiar with it. Look at other photos of land hermit crabs for comparison to discover what's common to all the animals and what markings or details are unique to your reference. Practice until you can get good recognizable hermit crabs with proper proportions before using your good 100% rag Stonehenge paper. It has a slight tooth similar to most sketchbook papers, and is a joy to draw on.
Step2
Stage one of Djinn, starting at the focal point eyes and deepest darks on carapace and shell edge
If you have trouble with proportions, enlarge or digitize and enlarge your reference photo until the hermit crab fits well within the 8" square and leaves interesting areas of negative space. Composition is intuitive, but try not to put the focal point (his eyes) dead center in the drawing, and don't let any part of the shell or his limbs "kiss" the edges.
If you have trouble sketching accurately, you can use Grid Method to copy the reference photo accurately. Draw a grid on a grayscale printout of your enlarged reference photo, one inch squares are very comfortable. Draw the same number of grid lines the same size in your sketchbook. Carefully draw the outlines of the hermit crab including eyes, antennae, body, leg segments and shell shapes in your sketchbook, copying only one grid square at a time. Clean up the lines and sketch in the values accurately from light to dark. Transfer your sketch using tracing paper and trace only the outlines. Use your value sketch as a guide when drawing in color from the color photo reference or its printout.
I drew him freehand, but if you're new to accurate realistic wildlife drawing or even new to hermit crabs, Grid Method sketching is precise and valuable. Draw the same animal enough times with Grid Method in different poses and you will begin to be able to draw it freehand, but you can do this project before you reach that point.
Lighten your transferred or original sketch lines with a kneaded eraser until they are barely visible, then spray your Stonehenge sketch with workable fixative as a barrier layer to prevent graphite mixing with your colors as you continue the work. Keep sketch lines to dark or medium value areas, if necessary use a white Col-Erase pencil to sketch white or light details before the fixative layer. This may help with reserving white on his eye highlights and shell highlights, or leave those blank and do them later as you work around them to midtone areas.
Stage One shows my sketch lines lightened, and some initial details drawn in Derwent Drawing Pencils. Match color and value with the photo reference exactly, and if you need to shade between one color and another, try combinations on a test strip of the Stonehenge. Paper color affects mixtures so you'll need to use the wide margins or a test strip to tell what each color will do on that ground and how it'll blend. Shade with heavy saturation where the color matches, then shade outward with soft tonal layers into the next hue.
Step3
Stage two of Djinn showing shading process and texturing details on carapace and shell
Test light colors over dark on your test strip. White over black creates a cool blue-gray and may be the right blend for some eye details. The brightest highlights are white. Continue working on the carapace slowly and carefully. If you have gridded a value sketch, you can compare your color work to the grid sector on the value sketch and work one small area at a time.
I worked one body part at a time once I had accurate outlines. I did the eyes, mandibles and antenna in stage one and scanned when I got the darks on the carapace. I continued to finish the carapace completely and began the shell and the legs on the right-hand side, ignoring the little black against white bristles that will go onto the legs in favor of accurately shading the base colors of each leg segment.
On the shell I put in base tones for the different shell colors. I used Ruby Earth, Mars Violet and Solway Blue for this stage of the shell, defining lights, darks and areas of reddish or bluish patches. I left the stripes across the shell blank for later darkening with Ink Blue. On the legs and carapace I used all the earth reds, Chocolate, Wheat, Black and Light Sienna, with some grays and Mars Violet in the shadows.
You need the 24 color set for this project because Mars Violet is not included in the 12 color set and neither are all the earth reds. I used every color in the tin on this rendering by the end. Where colors shade into each other, rust toward gold, I started with the darkest and shaded out in tonal layers, then added the next layer burnishing over where I started shading lighter and trailing that one out a little farther, eventually burnishing with Wheat up to the edge of areas of Light Sienna and white highlights over Light Sienna or grays.
On the carapace, shade with an irregular line to create the bumpiness of the surface, squiggle a little, and change colors often. Burnish over the previous colors. Burnish white over the other colors when you've brought their tonal layers in toward the white areas, to make the carapace shiny. Use white small highlights over other colors working out from the main highlights. If you get the highlight too big, work over it again with the darker colors till it's just right.
Patience and care with detail is what makes this style powerful. If you start having trouble, practice the texture of the trouble area on your scrap until you're ready to continue. If you have too much trouble, do a small color study on your test scrap.
Step4
The finished artwork, Djinn by Robert A. Sloan
I finished Djinn by completing all the leg area base colors, then worked over the shell to darken the colors. I used Ink Blue to deepen the darks and unify the shell, and to create the dark blue areas in the stripes. I went over that with White for highlights, sometimes mixing for a light blue, and matched the shell colors, burnishing heavily in places.
Then I added white patches over the leg segments, one segment at a time, roughly following the patterns in the reference. Derwent Drawing Pencils are extremely opaque and even on burnished darks, going heavily produced white or near-white marks. I sharpened Black to a very fine point and added a tiny dot of black to each white dot, creating bristles. I drew around individual bristles that silhouetted against dark, and added a few more by flicking white strokes.
I added the shadows on the cloth with Solway Blue, then went over them with Smoke Blue. Shadows under the crab were layered similarly, Solway Blue followed by Smoke Blue and Mars Violet. I used the tone of the paper for the background cloth, and deliberately worked more loosely on the cloth than the animal to keep focus on my land hermit crab and not on cloth textures.
If you try this on beige or buff Canson Mi-Tientes instead of the more expensive Stonehenge paper, use the smooth side. The texture is similar enough that you may get good results. When you're entirely done, spray with a light coat of workable fixative to prevent wax bloom. Aim the spray over the drawing and wave it up into the cloud of droplets, this helps reduce the chance of large droplets blotching the delicate paper.
Sign your land hermit crab, mat in acid free mat board and frame! You've done something magnificent. Each realistic animal you draw will hone your skills at wildlife drawing, whether arthropod, bird or mammal.
Djinn, by Robert A. Sloan
Reference photo Djinn by Vanessa Pike-Russell aka VanessaPR at eHow
Collect your materials and cut a piece of Stonehenge paper with substantial margins around an 8" square, lightly sketch the square with a grid ruler as a guideline for the picture area. You can use a T-square or parallel rule to mark up, or use a right triangle and ordinary ruler to get your dimensions accurate. Be sure the markup line width is outside the image area.
Stage one of Djinn, starting at the focal point eyes and deepest darks on carapace and shell edge
If you have trouble with proportions, enlarge or digitize and enlarge your reference photo until the hermit crab fits well within the 8" square and leaves interesting areas of negative space. Composition is intuitive, but try not to put the focal point (his eyes) dead center in the drawing, and don't let any part of the shell or his limbs "kiss" the edges.
Stage two of Djinn showing shading process and texturing details on carapace and shell
Test light colors over dark on your test strip. White over black creates a cool blue-gray and may be the right blend for some eye details. The brightest highlights are white. Continue working on the carapace slowly and carefully. If you have gridded a value sketch, you can compare your color work to the grid sector on the value sketch and work one small area at a time.
The finished artwork, Djinn by Robert A. Sloan
I finished Djinn by completing all the leg area base colors, then worked over the shell to darken the colors. I used Ink Blue to deepen the darks and unify the shell, and to create the dark blue areas in the stripes. I went over that with White for highlights, sometimes mixing for a light blue, and matched the shell colors, burnishing heavily in places. 
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