How to Draw a Human Body With Clothes
Cartoon Anatomy for Beginners, Learning the Ins and Outs
When it comes to learning how to draw people successfully, knowing human beefcake is key. Jeff Mellem, artist and author of How to Draw People , shares the top dos and don'ts of drawing beefcake for beginner artists then yous tin commencement drawing more realistic figures in no fourth dimension.
Effigy Drawings excerpted from "How to Draw People" by Jeff Mellem
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1. DON'T recall like an anatomy book
Cartoon anatomy for beginners can feel overwhelming at outset because there are so many muscles on the body. When you're looking at a model and you lot see a lot on bumps, you might be tempted to pull out an anatomy book to decipher what's going on under the peel.
An beefcake book is great at telling you what y'all're looking at but information technology'south not very helpful at telling you the iii-dimensional shape of the muscles.
DO retrieve in simple volumes
When yous first approach figure drawing, you demand to start out with establishing the basic volumes of the figure using spheres, boxes, and cylinders. By only beginning with these basic shapes so building up the complication equally yous go along, y'all will be able to make your drawing maintain its sense of dimension.
If you copy contours before you build in the structure, I guarantee you'll finish upwardly with a flat-looking drawing.
The drawing on the left overemphasizes the model's muscles and it looks more like an anatomy book than a figure. An artist needs to call back about the 3D shape of the muscles to give the figure an illusion of volume.
The Takeaway:
Use an anatomy volume to empathise what'southward below the surface but remember most each musculus in 3D. Don't describe the muscles as a series of lines. Draw them as sculpted spheres, boxes and cylinders.
With that existence said, you don't always have to really draw spheres and boxes on the page. If you lot look at an artist similar Harry Carmean, you tin can see that while he sometimes is only drawing counters of the trunk, he is clearly thinking about the 3D qualities of what he'south drawing.
2. DON'T make muscles the focus
When artists first start paying closer attention to adding anatomy to their drawings, they often have a tendency to overemphasize the anatomy. The figures often end up looking like they accept no skin. The muscles are there to add more realism to the effigy, but they shouldn't be the focal point of the drawing.
Do use muscles to reinforce the action
The focus of a drawing should convey an activeness, an emotion or the subject'due south personality. You don't want a viewer to stop and look at the parts of your drawing; you desire the viewer to see the whole figure and be interested in what that figure is doing and who he or she is.
In order to maintain focus on the activeness it'southward e'er a cracking practice to start all your drawings with a gesture cartoon. A gesture drawing serves as a blueprint for the action. Everything that comes afterwards is to help analyze and enhance that action.
The muscles should be drawn to amplify the movement of the figure and shouldn't describe attention to themselves. A proficient example of this is comic volume characters that have exaggerated anatomy to convey their force.
A successful comic volume page isn't about the character's muscles simply virtually how that graphic symbol'southward power is being expressed in the story. The volumes of the muscles are designed to lead the centre through the torso toward a signal of action. The reader isn't stopping to look at the grapheme'southward well-developed musculature.
Notice how the muscles in the effigy on the right reflect the gesture cartoon on the left. The muscles are used to reinforce the figure'southward action, they aren't the focus of the drawing.
The Takeaway:
Anatomy is there to add realism but it's less important then carrying the activeness and mental attitude of the whole figure.
3. DON'T draw every figure with the aforementioned shapes
When artists start using basic shapes to develop figures they often start to fall into a design of using the same shapes to build every effigy.
DO observe and adapt to your figure'southward unique build
When you lot're building your figure you have to look and adapt your shapes to the specific subject field yous're drawing. You're non going to use the same shapes for a bodybuilder that you would a sumo wrestler or a long altitude runner.
You accept to wait at your subject and figure out what simple shapes are the best tools to develop your figure. For example, some people take very squarish heads which needs to be constructed from box shapes while others have a more roundish appearance that should be built from spheres.
These two figures are in the same pose only are built from different shapes. The effigy on the right is built from more than block shapes and it gives the effigy a sturdier feeling.
The Takeaway:
Don't arroyo every figure with a formula. Instead, observe and suit your shapes to fit your discipline.
4. DON'T copy what you meet
If yous merely copy what you meet y'all will never create what you imagine. I never saw the signal of replicating a photo in a cartoon beyond existence an exercise to build observational skills. Why indistinguishable what already exists when you can interpret and arrange as you see fit?
DO recreate what you meet on the page
Observational skills are important only non just for copying what you run across. Apply your observational skills to analyze your subject's unique shapes so y'all can reinterpret it on the page. That means you aren't copying counters of the trunk. Instead you're recreating a figure on the page from the footing upward.
You start by capturing its movement in a gesture, rebuild the figure three-dimensionally using basic spheres, boxes and cylinders, and then sculpt those simple shapes into anatomical forms. This is a very dissimilar procedure than just replicating what you meet.
Yous're combining what you see with your 3D knowledge of anatomy to recreate the effigy on the page. This will not only help you to develop cartoon that have a sense of mass simply also will allow you to suit and modify the figure to create something new.
This is just a fun drawing to assist illustrate that you need to understand the 3D shapes of a figure and then you can reassemble them on the page. This is a different way of thinking than simply copying the contours you meet.
The Takeaway:
The chore of an artist isn't to replicate what he or she sees. It is to interpret what he or she understands. When drawing a figure, y'all bring in your knowledge of anatomy and volume to draw a figure rather than just copying contours and values.
five. Do pay attention to proportions and anatomy
To draw a realistic figure, yous need to pay attending to accurately capture the effigy's proportions and anatomy. This comes from both studying beefcake and having good observational skills.
DON'T be overly rigid.
Anatomy and proportion are important. But lonely, they don't brand for an interesting drawing. A effigy drawing that feels like it has personality or appears dynamic is going to be more interesting than one that is technically correct.
Permit the anatomy and proportion have a supporting function to the underlying gesture drawing. Every stride of your drawing should be to create a unified figure that has energy and mental attitude even if that means altering the figure's proportions or anatomy to better emphasize that action.
This figure has exaggerated proportions – like to those used in fashion drawing. It doesn't affair that information technology'south not correctly proportioned if the decision to exaggerate is purposeful. Yous can find many examples of artists who misconstrue and exaggerate proportions for stylistic reasons.
The Takeaway:
Drawing cracking beefcake helps artists create realistic-looking figures that announced to have actual mass and volume. Still, the anatomy needs to add to the sense of movement of the effigy and non distract from it. You must take the skill to be able to draw the muscles in 3D in gild to modify and suit the shapes and emphasize the move and personality of your subjects.
More Resources on Drawing Anatomy and Figures
- 3 Mistakes You lot Make When Drawing the Figures
- Effigy Cartoon Methods of the Masters
- Cartoon Dynamic Human Figures
- Train Your Eye With Figure Sketching
- 5 Figure Drawing Tips
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Source: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-techniques/beginner-artist/drawing-anatomy-for-beginners/