Want to Learn How to Draw People?

Learning how to draw people in something that's definitely worth spending the time to do it right. Believe it or not, I went through my entire fine arts university without ever being given a proper lesson about basic proportions and that is where most figure drawings are either made or broken.

If you've been drawing for a while and you"re able to easily draw what you see then you may already be able to draw figure when you're looking at one, but have you ever tried drawing without something to look at?

I'm going to take a wild guess here that your drawings are not quite as good as you'd like them to be and that's why it's worth it to take the time to go back in and study proportions which is what this part of the site is all about.

The Skeleton

The first step in learning how to draw people is to break the human figure down to its most simple element - the skeleton. There are a whole lot of bones in the human body but fortunately with a good understanding of the skull you can use that as a measurement tool for defining most other bones of the body. An example of this is that your average male figure is 6-8 "heads" tall.

Joints and Range of Motion

Along with understanding the proportions of the bones it's also very important to understand the range of movement that each bone and capable of. The joints are really flexible but if you're drawing people in extreme poses, for example in comic books, you will want to know just how far you can push the limits before things start looking strange. This info is also really great if you are drawing any kind of "people in motion" like in sports.

The Muscles

From there it's important to start understanding how the muscles attach to the different bones. Learning about the muscles fits in nicely with knowing the skeletal range of motion because the muscles expand and contract depending on the pose of the skeleton. The skin sits on top of the muscles, but it"s the muscles that give the shape to the skin.

This is a really gigantic topic that can take years to master, but don't let that scare you. Learning to really know and understand how to draw people is one of the best ways that any artist can spend their time.

The hours that you spend learning today will definitely pay itself back over and over again in the future, so unless you're already an old master I would highly recommend adding learning how to draw people to the top of your list of drawing techniques to master.

More Lessons will be coming shortly...