Drawing people part 1

As a follow up to our recent tutorial, Draw a Face Using Simple Shapes, weve decided to take things a step further and show how to draw an entire body. We wont be using as many simple shapes as we did for the face: theres a little more drawing involved. But dont worry, its very easy! But before we dive in, we need to discuss some very important considerations when drawing the human figure. Since weve got a lot to cover were splitting this tutorial into 2 parts. This first tutorial will cover the basics of proportion, anatomy, and other things to keep in mind when drawing people. The second tutorial will apply these principles to a vector illustration. Lets get started! > Click here to skip ahead to the second part of this tutorial

How Important is Proportion When Drawing People? Nothing can screw up a drawing of a person more quickly than wonky proportions! A couple of years ago, I teamed up with the incomparable Fanlie Rosier (member absolutely_frenchy on iStock ) for an article on figure drawing. We strongly suggest you check it out, but lets also run over the basics here as well! Measuring With Head-Lengths

Lets look at how the human body is structured. The neat thing about drawing people is, you can use body parts to accurately measure the size and positioning of other body parts: No ruler necessary. A persons height can accurately determined by the length of their head (head-length). This sounds super weird but it really does work. If you look at a photo of a person, you will see that people are 7 to 7 1/2 heads tall. Go ahead and try it: Use a ruler to mark the head-length, then see how many heads make up the entire person. In real life, you can also hold up a pencil and mark a head height with your thumb, then move the pencil up the body to see how many marked head heights you get. This will get you some strange looks from strangers in public spaces. Heres how a figures body measures out according to our head-length scale:

Here are two lovely ladies measured on our head scale. First head-length will be, of course, the persons head The second head-length down will be the chest (nipples) The third head-length down will be the belly button The fourth head-length down will be the groin The fifth head-length falls at mid-thigh

 The sixth head-length falls a little below the knee The seventh head-length falls between mid-calf and the ankle (shinbone) The seventh and a half head-length will be the bottom of the feet Head-lengths arent just for measuring height, however. There are plenty of other things that can be measured by head-lengths: Shoulders should be one head-length wide each Feet are one head-length long A persons elbows will fall roughly at their waist level, between the third and fourth headlength Standing sideways, a fit mans chest will be one head-length thick A forearm is similar in length to the foot: approximately one head-length long Other Proportional Tips and Tricks Some other handy proportional facts: A spread fingered hand will cover a persons face almost perfectly Just like the body, a human face can be measured too: this time, by eye length! A persons inside ankle bone will be slightly higher than their outside ankle bone Women have wider hips than men A persons height is roughly the same as the width of their outstretched arms The top of a persons ears will align horizontally with their eyes A persons eyes will fall halfway down their face A persons fingertips will fall around mid-thigh when arm is held straight against the body

Note how the hand is comparable in size to the face. Children Just when we thought we had proportions all figured out, weve noticed that our head-length measurements dont apply to everybody Children are a whole different ball game indeed! If youve ever seen a newborn baby, the first thing youll see is that their heads are very large compared to an adult. As they grow up, the head will become smaller in proportion to the rest of their bodies. Some considerations for drawing children include: Very young childrens height can be measured in about four head-lengths By age 7, children will have grown to around six head-heights tall A babys forehead is much wider than an adults and the eyes are slightly lower on the

face Young children will have slightly protruding stomachs A babys eyes are around the same size as an adults, so they will appear much larger on the face Children have much softer angles than an adult (the younger the child, the more baby fat there will be on the body), so use lots of curves and rounded edges Children are very active so dont draw them in stiff, straight poses The hands and feet of children are pudgier than adults, and fingers and toes will be smaller

Note that the childrens heads are larger compared to their bodies than the adults heads, and that their eyes are larger. What Else Affects Proportion? Weve shown how the human body can be measured using head-lengths. But what about when the parts of the body move, bend, or are positioned closer/further away from us?

Perspective Perspective is tricky (in fact, it probably deserves a whole tutorial to itself!). We wont get into complicated point perspectives here: We just want to concentrate on how it affects drawing people. A general rule of thumb is: The closer an object is to your eyes, the larger it will appear. If someone stands directly in front of you and extends a closed fist towards your face, their fist will naturally look bigger than if they held it pointing away from you! Artists will often play with more extreme perspectives for dramatic effects.

See how the white chess pieces in the back ground are shown much smaller than the black pieces in the foreground: This is how perspective affects objects of the same size. Movement Bodies bend. Elbows, knees, hips, wrists, fingers, ankles, waists and necks are all major bendy points on the human figure. Its important to note which way they bend, or your figures may end up looking as though theyve broken bones! Elbows and knees can only bend one way. If they bend backwards, youd be in pain! However, a slight hyper-extension of knees can be very graceful when drawing women, as it elongates the legs and makes them look more feminine. Wrists, ankles, necks and waists have much more range of motion and can bend in most directions. When drawing realistic people, keep a watchful eye on these bending points: Going too far with a bend can look forced and not very comfortable, which makes the viewer feel awkward!

Here is an example of how the body bends. Balance As a body bends in one direction, something is going to have to move in another direction to compensate. Think of a teeter-totter: As one end goes up, another comes down. A human can raise their arms above their head no problem, but when they start to lift a leg, their weight is going to have to shift or theyll fall over! If the upper body bends to the right, the hips and/or legs will have to push to the left to maintain balance. If the upper body bends forwards to touch their toes, their butt will push outwards to the back. If the upper body bends over backwards to stretch, the hips will move forward out over their toes. The more extreme the movement the more extreme the compensation will have to be!

When the body upper body or limbs move, the rest of the body moves in the other direction to compensate. Our Angles and Curves Whether a body part is angular or curved is determined by whats going on under our skin. Dont worry, were not going to get into an in-depth anatomy class here! But it is important to understand the difference between muscle, fat and bone particularly when drawing men and women, who are quite different to draw! Skeleton

Lets start with the human skeleton. You can see one on wikipedia if you dont happen to have one handy, or if you happened to toss the ones from your closet out during this years spring cleaning. You dont need to memorize all of the bones (unless you want to). What you need to pay attention to here is which bones are where, and their general sizes and shapes. The first bone Id like to mention is the pelvic bone, the big butterfly shaped one near the middle of the body. This is a very heavy bone, and its important to note that womens and mens pelvic bones are a little bit different. A womans pelvic bone is wider because it has to be large enough to birth a baby. So when youre drawing, keep this in mind! The forearms and lower legs of humans are actually made of 2 bones, not just one like upper arms and thighs. You cant easily see these bones when looking at a person, but when someone tenses their hands or twists their wrists, you can start to see the bone structure as the skin and muscles pull tight. Its common to exaggerate this on comicbook styled men to make them appear more ripped and powerful.

You can see the human ribcage is a cylindrical shape and that it doesnt extend all the way down the torso: This gives us the curvature of our waists. For women, this curvature is often very exaggerated to show femininity and sex appeal. At the base of the neck, theres a small bone called the clavicle that travels from our shoulders inward to the centre of our chests. When you look at a fit or slender person the clavicle bones are apparent as long thin horizontal bumps that sit just below the end of the neck. Its common to draw the clavicle as it gives nice definition to a persons upper chest area. The last thing well draw your attention to are the knees. Note that theyre surprisingly large and made up of a ball-and-socket type arrangement of bones. When drawing women, its common to skip excess definition of the knee area, whereas when drawing muscular men, the knees are often exaggerated as the thigh muscles start just above the knee area. Muscles Now that we know how the skeleton affects the way that humans look, its time to look at muscles. Because humans really dont look the way that skeleton did! There are layers and layers of muscles (and internal organs, of course) stacked on top of our skeletons so its important to pay attention to their sizes, shapes and positions. Here is a pretty good example of the muscles in the human body. There are a lot of them! There are also detailed breakdowns by muscle group available here. The biggest thing youll notice is how muscles have filled out the skimpy bits of our skeleton: the upper thighs, the upper arms, the chest and the abdomen. Youd hardly know that the forearm and lower legs on a humans skeleton are made of two bones, and look much thicker than the upper arm and thigh under the muscles when youve stripped away the muscles! The area under the ribcage is also filled in (with both muscles and internal organs). Some things to note about muscles: The muscles in the thighs are very long and there are a lot of them Back muscles are large, and on men, are often exaggerated to show strength Upper arms are typically drawn to focus on 2 muscles: the bicep and the tricep On women, muscles are usually softened and drawn without much shading The calf is shaped like an upside-down heart: When flexed, a drawing of a muscular man should show this definition Shoulders are their own muscle and shouldnt be drawn as extensions of the arm

muscles The muscles in a humans neck are vertical and from the front form a V shape Pectoral muscles (the chest) are drawn much, much larger on men than on women The abdominal muscles cluster vertically at the centre of the torso they give the six pack definition on muscular men Muscles look different depending on whether they are flexed or not Keep this in mind as youre drawing a moving or laboring character and plan accordingly Skin and Fat Deposits

The last thing to keep in mind while drawing people is how skin covers our bodies, and how fat is distributed underneath this skin. Skin isnt just a thin layer stretched out over our muscles! Our skin is made up of many layers of varying thicknesses depending on where it rests on our bodies. For example, the skin on a human face is much thinner than it is on our backs. Skin also changes as we age. It becomes thinner as we get older, and of course, starts to wrinkle. Since aging skin gets less blood flow over time, it looks less voluminous and isnt as stretchy and elastic as it is when were children. This is important to note when drawing elderly characters. Skin is very elastic, but, its not completely elastic! As we bend and twist, skin can create folds. A good example is bending over to touch our toes: Creases will be created in the skin over our tummies. How deep these creases are depend on how our fat is deposited. Some areas of the body contain more fat under our skin than others. Areas such as our

forearms and shins rarely collect fat, whereas our bellies, hips, and thighs can put on weight rather easily depending on our body types. Faces can also show the effects of fat, rounding out our cheeks and creating a lump under our chins (a double chin). Children in particular look pudgy and rounded compared to adults due to their baby fat. Fat distribution is very different between men and women! The most obvious example is, of course, breasts. One common newbie mistake is to draw breasts as perfect half circles sitting atop a womans chest: This isnt how breats are shaped (well, not unless a surgeon has intervened with nature!). Since breasts contain a lot of fat, they tend to slope downwards on a womans chest. Think of filling a water balloon with fluid, then holding it by the base of the balloon and holding it base-side-up it against a wall: The liquid will settle at the base of the balloon, creating more of a pear shape than a round beach ball shape. Women generally have a higher fat percentage than men do. As such, their bodies are often drawn as softer and rounder, whereas men are more angular. Body fat can also give people very different shapes: rounded (weight stays towards the middle of the body and tapers off towards the upper torso and legs), pear shaped (where the weight sits low on the body in the thighs and lower torso), box-shaped (where the torso carries weight but the arms and legs remain thin), and so on. Its fun to experiment with different figure shapes, especially when drawing caricatures and cartoony-styled characters. Remember: Even if youre drawing an overweight person, there are still muscles, organs and bones underneath the weight! Just because someone is carrying excess weight, there is still structure to be observed when drawing. Reference If you really love drawing people, the best thing that you can do is to surround yourself with lots of reference materials. For example, drawing hands is extremely tricky, but if you leave them out of your drawing youre missing out on one of the most expressive parts of the body! So what I do is keep a folder on my desktop of snapshots Ive taken of hands from every angle. Ive cropped them out of my photos and have them in an easy to find place, so if I ever need a hand holding an object, or a hand with the index finger extended, or a hand balled up into a fist, it only takes me seconds to find accurate photographic reference!

Here is an example of a reference photo being used to draw a semi-realistic hand. Other great drawing tools are wooden dummies. You can get them quite cheaply at most art supply stores and they are fully poseable like a real person. The joints in a dummy work exactly like a persons joints do: elbows and knees bend one way, while ankles, wrists, necks and waists are constructed in such a way to offer a wider range of motion. You can even buy wooden dummies of hard-to-draw body parts like hands! Using What We Know And Putting Our Own Spin On Proportion We now know how a real human is constructed. But as illustrators, we dont necessarily need to follow the rules Mother Natures set out for us! In many illustrations, youll notice that head-to-body proportions can look very different. Some people like to draw smaller bodies with very large heads to create cute, cartoony caricatures (and maximize on facial expressions). In classic comic book illustrations, heads will be much smaller in order to make the bodies look more heroic and muscular. In fact, comic books will often make the heads so small that the bodies could end up being 8, 10, or more head-lengths! There are many different styles of proportional exaggeration out there. Some of the most common: Increasing the hip and bust widths on a woman while decreasing the waist width (like Barbie dolls) to look more feminine Increasing the shoulder width on men to make them look stronger Making legs on both men and women longer to look graceful Extreme shading on mens muscles, and the addition of veins, to show strength

(particularly in comic book styles) Drawing eyes and lips larger on women to look more expressive and feminine Increasing muscle sizes on men (biceps, calves, etc) to look more powerful Making womens feet smaller to look delicate Less articulation in joints (elbows, knees, etc) to give a cartoony, goofy look Avoiding shading on womens muscles (abs, thighs, etc) to look more delicate and graceful Exaggerated postures (extremely slumping shoulders, etc) to show emotions more clearly

In the above example, the womans limbs are extremely elongated to look elegant and lean, and her hips and bust have been exaggerated for sex appeal. Her head-length to body ratio is about 8 head-lengths. The possibilities are literally endless! But always remember the basics of proportion, even when exaggerating. Otherwise your illustration could just end up looking wrong.

Click here for Part 2: Drawing People 2009 Jennifer Borton

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16 THOUGHTS ON DRAWING PEOPLE PART 1

Li'l C on May 3, 2012 at 3:48 pm said:

hi, i was wondering what do you call this kind of drawing style? i tried searching for retro-style drawings but this kind of drawing usually does not come up in the search engine. 0 0 Rate This

bortonia on May 16, 2012 at 2:19 pm said:

I dont think the style really has a name, to be honest. Its just how I like to draw. You could call it graphically simplified I suppose! 0 1 Rate This

JMK on April 1, 2012 at 6:54 am said:

Wonderful, have liked the vivid step-by-step description. Congrates! 0 0 Rate This

murrumbadownsbeautyclinic on March 30, 2012 at 11:00 am said:

can you give us some examples of doing hair especially clown hair 0 0 Rate This

bortonia on March 30, 2012 at 12:55 pm said:

Funny you should mention clowns. I recently provided some feedback for a contributor on iStock: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=330246 If you scroll down towards the bottom of this thread, youll see Ive done a side-by-side comparison, and my clown is on the right. To create the hair I used a dashed outline like I did in this tutorial: http://bortonia.wordpress.com/tutorials/beginner/making-a-lacy-valentineusing-stroke-effects/ Then, I added crescent moon shaped pieces to look like highlights, and used darker reds to create shadows near the base of the hair. I hope this helps! 0 1 Rate This

NII on November 16, 2010 at 1:47 am said:

AGYEI! This is great stuff, let us have more 0 0 Rate This

NII on November 16, 2010 at 1:39 am said:

This is GREAT How can I get the part 2. thanks 0 0 Rate This

Jaquelyn on November 13, 2009 at 10:42 am said:

this is great but i c more stuff on how ur body changes than how 2 draw the bodies otherwise it was OK in helpfullness but i think i learned more about physical properties of human body 1 2 Rate This lol sry and thx

bortonia on November 16, 2009 at 1:15 am said:

You can see the actual drawing tutorial in part 2, which is here: http://bortonia.wordpress.com/tutorials/drawing-people-part-2/ 0 1 Rate This

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Mike D on September 6, 2009 at 11:16 am said:

Great info Ive filed this in my design reference for when I have to deal with

drawing people! 0 1

THANKS!

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Derky on September 4, 2009 at 12:14 pm said:

very helpful!! i cant wait until you post the 2nd part =) 0 1 Rate This

Neha on September 3, 2009 at 1:27 pm said:

Hi, Thanks for the such good and useful tuts.I have created some vector faces from the help of ur tutus. Hope to see more interesting tuts on the same topic . Thanks 0 1 Rate This

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Brad C on August 20, 2009 at 1:13 pm said:

Wow, very descriptive and some great information on here. Ill definitely have to come back and reread sometime for reference.

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