How to Draw a Body With Basic Shapes
Drawing Anatomy for Beginners, Learning the Ins and Outs
When it comes to learning how to draw people successfully, knowing human anatomy is primal. Jeff Mellem, artist and author of How to Depict People , shares the top dos and don'ts of drawing beefcake for beginner artists then you tin can kickoff drawing more than realistic figures in no time.
Figure Drawings excerpted from "How to Describe People" by Jeff Mellem
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1. DON'T think like an anatomy book
Cartoon anatomy for beginners can feel overwhelming at first because there are so many muscles on the body. When you're looking at a model and you lot come across a lot on bumps, you might be tempted to pull out an anatomy book to decipher what'due south going on under the skin.
An anatomy book is not bad at telling you what you're looking at merely it'southward non very helpful at telling you lot the three-dimensional shape of the muscles.
DO retrieve in unproblematic volumes
When you first approach figure cartoon, you demand to start out with establishing the basic volumes of the figure using spheres, boxes, and cylinders. Past simply beginning with these basic shapes so edifice up the complication every bit you go on, you volition be able to make your drawing maintain its sense of dimension.
If you copy contours before y'all build in the structure, I guarantee you'll end up with a flat-looking drawing.
The drawing on the left overemphasizes the model'south muscles and it looks more than like an anatomy book than a figure. An artist needs to think most the 3D shape of the muscles to give the effigy an illusion of book.
The Takeaway:
Utilize an beefcake book to understand what's beneath the surface just think about each muscle in 3D. Don't describe the muscles as a series of lines. Describe them as sculpted spheres, boxes and cylinders.
With that existence said, yous don't always accept to actually draw spheres and boxes on the page. If you wait at an artist similar Harry Carmean, you tin encounter that while he sometimes is just drawing counters of the body, he is clearly thinking well-nigh the 3D qualities of what he'due south drawing.
ii. DON'T make muscles the focus
When artists first start paying closer attention to adding anatomy to their drawings, they oft have a tendency to overemphasize the anatomy. The figures often end up looking like they have no pare. The muscles are in that location to add more realism to the effigy, but they shouldn't exist the focal point of the drawing.
Practise use muscles to reinforce the activity
The focus of a drawing should convey an action, an emotion or the discipline's personality. Yous don't want a viewer to stop and look at the parts of your drawing; yous want the viewer to see the whole figure and exist interested in what that figure is doing and who he or she is.
In order to maintain focus on the activity it'due south always a groovy practise to offset all your drawings with a gesture drawing. A gesture drawing serves every bit a blueprint for the action. Everything that comes afterward is to help analyze and heighten that action.
The muscles should be drawn to amplify the motility of the figure and shouldn't describe attention to themselves. A good example of this is comic volume characters that take exaggerated anatomy to convey their strength.
A successful comic book page isn't about the graphic symbol's muscles merely well-nigh how that character'south ability is being expressed in the story. The volumes of the muscles are designed to lead the eye through the trunk toward a betoken of activeness. The reader isn't stopping to await at the character's well-adult musculature.
Observe how the muscles in the figure on the right reflect the gesture drawing on the left. The muscles are used to reinforce the figure's action, they aren't the focus of the drawing.
The Takeaway:
Beefcake is there to add together realism only it's less important and so conveying the activeness and mental attitude of the whole figure.
3. DON'T draw every figure with the same shapes
When artists starting time using basic shapes to develop figures they oft start to fall into a design of using the same shapes to build every figure.
Practice detect and adapt to your figure'southward unique build
When you're edifice your effigy you have to look and adapt your shapes to the specific subject yous're drawing. You're not going to use the same shapes for a bodybuilder that you would a sumo wrestler or a long distance runner.
You have to look at your subject and figure out what simple shapes are the all-time tools to develop your figure. For example, some people take very squarish heads which needs to be constructed from box shapes while others accept a more than roundish advent that should be built from spheres.
These two figures are in the same pose only are built from different shapes. The figure on the correct is congenital from more block shapes and it gives the effigy a sturdier feeling.
The Takeaway:
Don't approach every figure with a formula. Instead, find and adapt your shapes to fit your subject.
four. DON'T copy what you see
If y'all only copy what you lot come across you will never create what you imagine. I never saw the point of replicating a photo in a drawing beyond being an exercise to build observational skills. Why duplicate what already exists when you can interpret and adapt as you see fit?
Practice recreate what you see on the page
Observational skills are important simply non just for copying what yous meet. Apply your observational skills to clarify your subject'due south unique shapes so you can reinterpret information technology on the page. That means y'all aren't copying counters of the body. Instead y'all're recreating a effigy on the folio from the ground upward.
You start by capturing its movement in a gesture, rebuild the figure three-dimensionally using basic spheres, boxes and cylinders, and so sculpt those simple shapes into anatomical forms. This is a very different process than just replicating what y'all see.
You're combining what you lot run across with your 3D cognition of beefcake to recreate the figure on the page. This will non only assistance you to develop drawing that accept a sense of mass just too will allow yous to adapt and modify the figure to create something new.
This is just a fun drawing to help illustrate that you need to empathize the 3D shapes of a figure and so you can reassemble them on the page. This is a unlike style of thinking than just copying the contours you come across.
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 noesis of anatomy and book to draw a effigy rather than just copying contours and values.
5. DO pay attention to proportions and anatomy
To draw a realistic figure, y'all need to pay attention to accurately capture the effigy's proportions and anatomy. This comes from both studying anatomy and having practiced observational skills.
DON'T be overly rigid.
Anatomy and proportion are important. But solitary, they don't make for an interesting drawing. A effigy cartoon that feels like information technology has personality or appears dynamic is going to be more interesting than i that is technically right.
Let the anatomy and proportion accept a supporting role to the underlying gesture drawing. Every step of your drawing should exist to create a unified figure that has energy and attitude fifty-fifty if that means altering the effigy's proportions or anatomy to better emphasize that activity.
This figure has exaggerated proportions – similar to those used in fashion drawing. It doesn't matter that it'due south non correctly proportioned if the decision to exaggerate is purposeful. You tin detect many examples of artists who distort and exaggerate proportions for stylistic reasons.
The Takeaway:
Drawing not bad anatomy helps artists create realistic-looking figures that appear to have actual mass and volume. All the same, the anatomy needs to add together to the sense of movement of the figure and not distract from it. Yous must have the skill to exist able to draw the muscles in 3D in order to modify and arrange the shapes and emphasize the motion and personality of your subjects.
More than Resources on Drawing Beefcake and Figures
- 3 Mistakes You Brand When Drawing the Figures
- Figure Cartoon Methods of the Masters
- Cartoon Dynamic Human Figures
- Train Your Eye With Figure Sketching
- 5 Figure Drawing Tips
Source: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-techniques/beginner-artist/drawing-anatomy-for-beginners/
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