How to Draw People

Posted by Sharon on Tuesday, 21 October, 2008 @ 6:15

How to Draw People
By Christopher Guiles

It’s only natural that as people, most artists want to be able to know how to draw people. It’s a handy skill to have, as well, as being able to sketch out a picture of a friend or loved one makes for a great gift.

A great place to start when learning how to draw people is the head. Start with some sketched circles, it doesn’t have to be perfect. You’ll be leading the facial features at the lower part of the front, but a basic circle will provide decent framework. Now that you’ve got your circle, draw a vertical and horizontal line from top to bottom and side to side, but stop for a moment.

Try to think of your head as being three dimensional and slightly facing down and to the right or left. Now without looking straight on, but more off centered a bit, imagine where the eyes, mouth, and nose would be and draw the lines between the eyes for the vertical, and just above the mouth and below the nose. You can think of the head as more of a globe in these early stages. Once you have those two framing lines circling your globe, you can go about working in the eyes, nose, mouth, all of the basic facial features really. It’s a lot easier once you have a reference point.

Moving along with how to draw people and down the form, we can go to the neck. Remember the neck in the back is largely a continuation of the head, whereas in the front of the head it the chin cuts in maybe a third of the way before coming down. Come out to begin to form the shoulders. Don’t worry too much about muscle definition or anything towards that end yet. You can sketch in some toning lines here or there, but you can add the majority later, right now we’re just concerned with getting the basic structure together.

The next step in how to draw people covered will be the chest. You can use another three dimensional circle like you did for the head here as well. The top side areas of the circle where it curves off can be used as a basis for setting the arm pits, and from there you can fill in the arms and connect them to the shoulders. Use the same idea for the vertical line to divide the chest and ribcage.

Finishing up the lesson on how to draw people, it’s pretty straightforward from here on. It’s largely up to you as to where you want to begin to transition from the chest/stomach into the legs in terms of how far you want to expand and how high up you’ll do it. Make sure you come out somewhat to make it more realistic and get away from the image of the stick man. The knee joints will have a little definition, and the calves will come out a little, as well, before narrowing out again and ending with the feet.

Now that you have the basic form down, you can add more features, definition, tone, and muscle and bone structure by adding in marks here and there. Remember sketching can go a long way. For hundreds of step by step illustrations as well as a wealth of information on the art of drawing, visit http://yourreviewsite.com/learntodraw/index.html and learn the secrets of drawing as well as the famous artists of past and present.

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Posted by Sharon on Friday, 26 September, 2008 @ 11:00

There’s two big differences between drawing normal women and drawing pin-up women: Proportions and poses. Proportion-wise, the women have narrower waists and longer legs. As for poses, there’s an infinite variety, but there’s a few key features common in most of them.

Most pin-up poses show the entire female body, posed so as to get a good view of the legs. I’ve seen pin-up images which show only the upper half of the woman, but these are much less common than the full-body pin-ups, and the arms and face are more dynamically posed than they normally are otherwise.

The woman is usually turning her head to face the viewer straight-on, or looking just slightly to the side, but her torso is turned in a wide variety of ways. I’ve seen straight from the front, straight from the back, and every possible side angle in between.

Although the body itself can be placed in a wide variety of poses, the perspective (or “camera angle” or “viewing angle,” depending on who you ask) is much more straightforward. It’s almost always directly at eye level, never a bird’s-eye or worm’s-eye view. The common exception is a bird’s-eye view looking down on a woman stretched out on a bed.

The bird’s-eye view of a woman on a bed is also an exception in that it is one of the rare times a pin-up woman is lying flat on the bed instead of being raised up slightly. A lying pin-up pose is often almost turned into a sitting pin-up pose. Of the poses in which a woman is completely lying down, most of the ones i’ve seen focus more on the woman’s face and hands than on the rest of her body.

These are just some generalisations to get you started in choosing a good pin-up pose. I suggest you also look through pin-up art for inspiration. Besides the plethora of magazines on the subject, there’s also some wonderful pin-up artists, such as Olivia De Berardinis, who has entire books of pin-up artwork available for sale.

Posted by Sharon on Wednesday, 24 September, 2008 @ 12:00

Let me start off by saying Chris Patmore’s How to Draw Fantasy Females doesn’t actually have as much information on drawing as one would expect from the title. It’s a great book on female character design, and there’s plenty of sketches and drawing ideas spread throughout the book, but beginners will want to pass on this one until they’ve got a bit more experience.

That said, if you’re ready to move beyond drawings and on to creating female characters with a story behind them, How to Draw Fantasy Females is excellent. It’s basically a character design workshop (the author even has another, very similar book with the title… yep… Character Design Studio.) The majority of the book gives various female characters two-page spreads complete with story backgrounds, completed illustrations, and sketches. The characters all come from different sources, resulting in a variety of styles throughout the book. Some of these styles are great, some… not so good. Fortunately, the great styles vastly outweight the not-so-great ones.

I’ve had a copy of How to Draw Fantasy Females for some time now, and i absolutely love it, but i have trouble recommending it to others, simply because it’s not about how to draw fantasy females, it’s about creating interesting fantasy female characters. And as far as strictly creating characters goes, there’s many more books out there on the same subject. They’re mostly targeted towards writers, not artists, but they’re out there. Then again, i’ve had two such books on my shelf for months which i haven’t managed to finish reading yet, whereas How to Draw Fantasy Females is full of pictures and the written information is in scattered, bite-size chunks. Basically, if you’re looking for information on creating characters and don’t feel like slogging through blocks of text, this is a great book; if not, it’s only another book to pass up.

Posted by Sharon on Monday, 22 September, 2008 @ 11:00

Tattoos can go far towards adding personality to a character, but drawing tattoos is also a bit tricky, as it requires duplicating a flat image on a curved surface. Here i’m going to show one basic way of getting tattoos to go along with the contours of the body instead of lying flat.

The tattoo design i’m using for an example is pretty basic by design - i didn’t want to use a complicated image where the curves of the body would get lost among the details of the tattoo. However, the basic principles for adding a tattoo to a body are the same no matter what the tattoo looks like.

Contour Lines

The first step is to figure out how the tattoo should align with the body. Contour lines - lines which wrap around the body - are very useful for this. For some parts of the body it’s very easy to figure out where the contour lines go without need of any reference, but other parts (such as hands or areas around the joints) can be trickier. Obviously, you’re not very likely to find proper photo reference where a model has lines drawn all around em, but most 3D software includes a wireframe option which works well as reference (Daz Studio is free and has a low learning curve, which makes it great if you’re not likely to use 3D software for anything else.)

You don’t need to draw every line in the perfect spot - just having a general idea of which way the lines should be curving will be quite enough.

Adding the Design

The trickiest part of adding tattoos is getting them to curve along with the contour lines. I find the easiest way to make tattoos look right is to sketch a flat grid over the original tattoo design and a contoured grid on the body of my drawing, then copy the tattoo in the squares of the contoured grid.

The Finished Product

Once the grid has been removed, the difference between the tattoo on the contoured body and the tattoo as drawn flat is obvious. The contoured tattoo looks much more like it’s inked onto a living, flexible body.

Posted by Sharon on Monday, 8 September, 2008 @ 2:22

Click image for full-size

In figure drawing it’s important to be able to draw all the body parts at the right sizes. As a result, many books on how to draw people include a chart like this one, which marks off the body in head lengths to show where important proportions are. This one isn’t much different, except i’ve also marked where i draw the shoulder line and hip line in the early stages of the drawing (about a third of the way through the second head-length and halfway through the fourth head-length). If you don’t already have a similar chart handy in a book, feel free to print it out and tuck it in your sketchbook for reference.

If there’s any other proportions anyone feels should be marked off, let me know in the comments - i’ll update the chart to show them.

Posted by Sharon on Saturday, 6 September, 2008 @ 12:00

I’ve already shown how to draw the “average” female face. But there’s one problem with that kind of face:

It’s average.

Let’s face it, most of the time, when you’re drawing a woman, you’ll either be trying to match the appearance of someone… or you’ll be trying to draw a pretty character.

When it comes to faces, the key to making one person look different from another is adjusting the proportions. It’s no different when changing an average girl into a pretty one. Exactly what is considered pretty varies from culture to culture, but there’s some features which are more or less standard worldwide:

• Large eyes
• Small nose and mouth
• Full lips
• A long, slender neck

By altering normal proportions into these prettier proportions, you’ll end up with an overall prettier picture.

You can, of course, take these proportions to extremes… giant eyes, a tiny button nose, etc.… but be careful not to go overboard unless you’re drawing in a cartoon style. In a realistic style, such deformed proportions will look absurd and may end up looking ugly instead of pretty. The human brain automatically notices distorted proportions as being “wrong” and when it comes to faces, “wrong” means “ugly.” In cartoons, this isn’t a problem; cartoons are drawn in such an unrealistic way we’re not surprised when the proportions don’t match reality.

I’m using manga as an example here, since that’s a cartoon style pretty much defined by giant eyes and tiny facial features, but virtually any cartoon style can be drawn with these proportions. Just keep in mind that the further your proportions are from the average, the less realistic of a style you’ll be able to get away with.

Posted by Sharon on Thursday, 4 September, 2008 @ 12:00

I own several books in the How to Draw Manga series, and thus far How to Draw Manga: Bishoujo Around the World is the one i own with the least information on actually drawing in the manga style. Despite this (or maybe because of it), Bishoujo Around the World is my favourite book in the series.

I’ve already mentioned in my review of Comic Artist’s Photo References that Bishoujo Around the World is the only book i have which shows the differences in body type between various races. However, breaking body types down according to race is only the first of four sections in the book.

Chapter Two, “How to Draw Bishoujo from Different Countries and Regions,” is where the book really gets interesting. There’s not much on the differences in body types; in this chapter, it’s all about faces and clothing. Each region has a page dedicated to what makes faces in that region different from faces in other regions - different eyes, noses, mouths, sometimes even getting into the variations in forehead appearances. The pages on facial differences are followed by 1-3 pages showing clothing styles specific to the region, often including illustrations showing how the characters put on multi-layered costumes or tie garments such as saris.

The third section is all about clothing, though it’s specific to more primitive clothing styles, such as togas, loincloths, and various other ancient costumes. There’s not much information on drawing different types of women in Chapter Three, but there’s some great inspiration for putting them in fantasy costumes.

Like most books in the How to Draw Manga series, the book ends with a section showing examples of professional artists’ work, complete with sketches and helpful tips. In Bishoujo Around the World, the artwork is mostly fantasy pictures, including a magical woman drawn by Minoru Aki and a downright gorgeous Arabian dancer by Keiko Shiono. These artworks give great examples of the basic principles explained in the book as applied to finished art, instead of the sample drawings spread throughout the book.

Posted by Sharon on Wednesday, 3 September, 2008 @ 0:08

Moving on from basic poses and mediocre line-drawings… Today’s a step-by-step on how to draw a face. Specifically, a female face. In these examples i’m just going to be showing full front and profile views; i’ll do a post on three-quarter views in the future but until then, keep in mind the vertical guideline will curve in the direction your subject is looking and the features on the side toward the viewer will be slightly bigger than the features on the side turned away from the viewer.

Ready? Let’s get started…

Outline

Start with the general outline of the head - basically, the shape of the skull.

In the front view, this is roughly egg-shaped - round at the top, pointed at the bottom - though the exact shape of the bottom depends on the shape of the jawline.

In the side view, the head looks a bit more like a sideways oval superimposed over the egg shape, due to the back of the skull extending far past the parts of the skull which make up the face.

I’ve also put some lines in to mark the neck - exactly when you place these is up to you, but if you leave them out, you’ll have a somewhat odd floating head picture. Which is great if that’s the effect you’re looking for, but in most cases it’s not. At this early stage, there’s no need to make them perfectly accurate; just draw some lightly curved lines wherever looks best.

Vertical Guideline

The first major guideline in drawing a face, the vertical guideline is to the face what the gesture line is to the body. The vertical guideline goes from the middle of the top of the skull, down through the nose, and ends at the tip of the chin. In a full frontal picture, this is more or less a straight line; in a profile, it’s pretty much already been drawn in as the front edge of the picture. In a three-quarter view (where the subject is looking only partly to the side), the line will be curved along the face.

In the full front view, it’s important for the vertical line to go straight down the centre - if you notice the initial skull outline is a bit “off” and the vertical line can’t go straight down the centre… no big deal… it’s early in the drawing, and with the vertical guideline in place, it’s easy to notice where the initial skull outline is off from the model. Fix it up and move on. If you’ve got a mirror handy use that to double-check as well.

Other Guidelines

The rest of the guidelines vary slightly according to who you’re drawing. For this example, i’m just going to use very average proportions. When you’re drawing a real person, you’ll want to move these guidelines around a bit so they better match your subject.

I’ll be going into proportions in more detail in a later post, but here’s the basics:

• The eye line is halfway between the top of the skull and the tip of the chin
• The width of an eye when the face is viewed from the front is about 1/5 the total width of the head
• The base of the nose, when the face is drawn in profile, is about level with where the jawline meets the skull
• From the front, the base of the nose is about 2/7 of the way up from the chin - though it can be tricky to accurately measure out the face in sevenths, so in most circumstances it’ll be easier to put it at the 1/4 line and adjust it upward until it looks right
• The mouth is halfway between the nose and the chin

	Facial Features With the guidelines already in place, the facial features should be fairly easy to put in. The sizes and locations are already marked out for you, though you still need to pay attention to the shapes of the individual features.
	Adding Details You won’t need any of the original guidelines from here on out, so you can get rid of them now. Add in the rest of the details in the facial features - the iris and pupil, the shape of the nose, the edges of the lips. Don’t outline everything as it will give your drawing a somewhat cartoonish look - just outline enough to indicate where everything is.
	Shading Now the only thing left to do is shade the face. There’s many different ways to shade, and the best one depends on the style you’re working in, but there’s a few things to keep in mind regardless of style: Avoid shading in straight lines - adjust the shading to match the contours of the face. Remember to add some shadows in the eyes, even the whites, to show the roundness of the eyes. When shading lips, keep the upper lip darker than the lower lip and the corners darker than the middle.

Posted by Sharon on Monday, 1 September, 2008 @ 20:59

Over the next week or two, i’m going to be posting a few articles on drawing the female face. Before i get into that, though, i wanted to show this video i found on YouTube, originally posted by user Sycra - a portrait comparison showing the differences between male and female faces.

If you’re not very good at drawing faces, this is a good video to watch to learn from someone more experienced. Even if you’re good at drawing faces, it’s worth a watch to get a better idea of the differences in proportions between male and female faces.

Posted by Sharon on Sunday, 31 August, 2008 @ 12:00

It’s a bit early for me to try any “month in review” type of posts… i haven’t even done a full month of posts yet, after all; How to Draw People’s first post was on 08 August.

Still, i’d like to give it a shot, at least for a few months. It’s not like i’ve absolutely nothing; there’s some posts here which, considering the age of the blog, have been pretty damn popular.

And so, without further ado:

Most Popular Posts of August 2008

• How to Draw Romantic Couples
• Demo: A Quick Kiss
• How to Draw People: A Beginner’s Guide
• How to Draw People in More Exciting Poses

Post Theme for September 2008

Obviously, August was pretty pose-heavy. For September, though, i’m planning something a bit different: Girls. Yep, just girls. Pretty girl faces. Female proportions. Pin-up models (yes, really). If you’re not already subscribed, be sure to grab the RSS feed for your month’s dose of pretty ladies.