DON’T draw every figure with the same shapes The muscles are used to reinforce the figure’s action, they aren’t the focus of the drawing.Īnatomy is there to add realism but it’s less important than conveying the action and attitude of the whole figure. Notice how the muscles in the figure on the right reflect the gesture drawn on the left. The reader isn’t stopping to look at the character’s well-developed musculature.

The volumes of the muscles are designed to lead the eye through the body toward a point of action. A good example of this is comic book characters that have exaggerated anatomy to convey their strength.Ī successful comic book page isn’t about the character’s muscles but about how that character’s power is being expressed in the story. The muscles should be drawn to amplify the movement of the figure and shouldn’t draw attention to themselves. Everything that comes after is to help clarify and enhance that action. A gesture drawing serves as a blueprint for the action. In order to maintain focus on the action, it’s always a great practice to start all your drawings with a gesture drawing. You don’t want a viewer to stop and look at the parts of your drawing you want the viewer to see the whole figure and be interested in what that figure is doing and who he or she is. The focus of a drawing should convey action, emotion, or the subject’s personality. The muscles are there to add more realism to the figure, but they shouldn’t be the focal point of the drawing. The figures often end up looking like they have no skin. When artists first start paying closer attention to adding anatomy to their drawings, they often have a tendency to overemphasize anatomy. If you look at an artist like Harry Carmean, you can see that while he sometimes is only drawing counters of the body, he is clearly thinking about the 3D qualities of what he’s drawing. With that being said, you don’t always have to actually draw spheres and boxes on the page. Draw them as sculpted spheres, boxes, and cylinders. Don’t draw the muscles as a series of lines. Use an anatomy book to understand what’s below the surface but think about each muscle in 3D. An artist needs to think about the 3D shape of the muscles to give the figure an illusion of volume. The drawing on the left overemphasizes the model’s muscles and it looks more like an anatomy book than a figure. If you copy contours before you build the structure, I guarantee you’ll end up with a flat-looking drawing.

Check also drawing base, base drawing, drawing bases Do think in simple volumesīy simply beginning with these basic shapes and then building up the complexity as you go along, you will be able to make your drawing maintain its sense of dimension. When you’re looking at a model and you see a lot of bumps, you might be tempted to pull out an anatomy book to decipher what’s going on under the skin.Īn anatomy book is great at telling you what you’re looking at but it’s not very helpful at telling you the three-dimensional shape of the muscles. DON’T think like an anatomy bookĭrawing anatomy for beginners can feel overwhelming at first because there are so many muscles on the body. Small circles indicate where the joints will be.

Now try to draw a woman portrait on a belt.ĭraw an oval workpiece under the head as well as straight lines - body axis, impact axis, and foot axis.

Sketch woman body drawing sitting