Learn To Draw The Human Figure

The human figure is considered to be one of the most difficult subjects to draw. One of the most commonly encountered problem of aspiring artists would be drawing it in proportion. So, if you want to learn to draw the human figure in the right proportion, here are some basic steps in doing so.

Materials

What you’ll need would be paper, pencil, a good eraser, ruler, and one good dose of imagination! Once you have all these, you are ready to start drawing.

Start With The Head

One of the easiest portion to start with would be the head. Draw the head. Create an oval for the head. This is because most heads are said to be oval in shape. Place this oval at the top portion of your paper. Try not to put too much pressure with your pencil stroke just yet. Draw lightly, and consider this to be a sketch.

Get The Body Size

Use your ruler to determine the body size. Get the measurement of the rest of your subject’s body. The ideal measurement can be taken from the principle that the human head’s size is approximately 1/7 of the total body height. So, measure the height of the oval that you just drew. Compute for the height of six more oval heads, and you would get the height of your body. It is best that you put marks on your paper so that it would be easy for you to see the measurement marks.

Start Having Some Figure

Once you’ve determined the height, you can now start giving your drawing some figure. Start by drawing the hips. Generally, you can find the widest portion of the hips located halfway down of the body. Draw a basic trapezoid shape. Put the widest or the base line of your trapezoid approximately at the position where the hips and waist should be, according to your measurements. The normal space starting from the hips up to the waist would be approximately 2/3 of the head’s length.

Add The Lower Extremities And The Upper Extremities

Add more form by drawing the knees and feet. Your figure’s knees should be halfway in between the feet and hips. Obviously, the feet would be the bottom part of the body. Create 2 small circles for the knees, place 2 small ellipses for the feet.

Now draw the upper extremities of the body by adding the shoulders, arms, elbows, and hands. Generally, the elbows should fall at waist level. The shoulders should be just right below the bottom of the head on both sides. Just like with knees, you can draw small circles for the elbows. To put the shoulders, draw two more heads lightly. Place 1 on each side of the head. You can draw circles to for the shoulders below each imaginary head. For the hands, they usually fall halfway down your figure’s thighs. Create small ellipsis for the hands.

Get Connected!

Now, it’s time for you to connect the different body parts that you drew. Use ellipses so that you can connect the body part. As soon as this is done, you could start adding some shading and details. Add some clothing and some other essentials. Do not forget to get a light source so that you’d know where the shadows should be placed.