How to Draw Human Body Perspective
Drawing Anatomy for Beginners, Learning the Ins and Outs
When it comes to learning how to draw people successfully, knowing human anatomy is central. Jeff Mellem, artist and author of How to Draw People , shares the elevation dos and don'ts of drawing anatomy for beginner artists so you lot tin can beginning drawing more realistic figures in no time.
Figure Drawings excerpted from "How to Depict People" by Jeff Mellem
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1. DON'T think like an anatomy book
Drawing anatomy for beginners can feel overwhelming at first because there are so many muscles on the trunk. When you're looking at a model and you 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 groovy at telling you what y'all're looking at but it'southward not very helpful at telling you the three-dimensional shape of the muscles.
Exercise think in simple volumes
When you kickoff approach figure drawing, y'all need to first out with establishing the bones volumes of the effigy using spheres, boxes, and cylinders. By merely beginning with these basic shapes and and then edifice up the complexity as you get along, you will 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 lot'll stop upwardly with a flat-looking cartoon.
The drawing on the left overemphasizes the model's muscles and information technology looks more like an beefcake volume than a figure. An artist needs to think nearly the 3D shape of the muscles to requite the figure an illusion of book.
The Takeaway:
Use an anatomy book to empathize what's below the surface just recollect virtually each muscle in 3D. Don't draw the muscles every bit a series of lines. Draw them every bit sculpted spheres, boxes and cylinders.
With that existence said, you don't e'er accept to really describe spheres and boxes on the page. 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'southward drawing.
2. DON'T brand muscles the focus
When artists first start paying closer attention to adding anatomy to their drawings, they frequently accept a tendency to overemphasize the anatomy. The figures ofttimes end up looking like they take no skin. The muscles are in that location to add together more realism to the figure, just they shouldn't be the focal point of the drawing.
Practice use muscles to reinforce the action
The focus of a drawing should convey an action, an emotion or the subject's personality. Yous don't desire a viewer to stop and expect at the parts of your drawing; you lot want the viewer to see the whole effigy and be interested in what that figure is doing and who he or she is.
In lodge to maintain focus on the action information technology's always a not bad exercise to starting time all your drawings with a gesture drawing. A gesture drawing serves every bit a blueprint for the action. Everything that comes after is to assistance analyze and raise that action.
The muscles should be fatigued to dilate the movement of the figure and shouldn't draw attention to themselves. A good case of this is comic book characters that have exaggerated anatomy to convey their strength.
A successful comic book page isn't most the character's muscles only virtually how that graphic symbol's ability is being expressed in the story. The volumes of the muscles are designed to lead the eye through the body toward a betoken of action. The reader isn't stopping to look at the character'due south well-adult musculature.
Notice how the muscles in the figure on the correct reflect the gesture drawing on the left. The muscles are used to reinforce the effigy's action, they aren't the focus of the drawing.
The Takeaway:
Anatomy is there to add realism simply information technology'southward less important then conveying the action and attitude of the whole effigy.
3. DON'T draw every figure with the same shapes
When artists start using basic shapes to develop figures they often start to autumn into a pattern of using the same shapes to build every effigy.
Practice discover and adapt to your effigy's unique build
When you're edifice your effigy you take to look and conform your shapes to the specific bailiwick yous're cartoon. You're non going to use the same shapes for a bodybuilder that you would a sumo wrestler or a long distance runner.
You take to look at your discipline and figure out what elementary shapes are the all-time tools to develop your figure. For instance, 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 aforementioned pose but are congenital from different shapes. The effigy on the right is built from more than cake shapes and information technology gives the figure a sturdier feeling.
The Takeaway:
Don't approach every effigy with a formula. Instead, detect and adapt your shapes to fit your subject.
4. DON'T copy what you see
If you only copy what you lot see y'all will never create what you imagine. I never saw the point of replicating a photo in a drawing across being an exercise to build observational skills. Why indistinguishable what already exists when you can interpret and adapt equally yous encounter fit?
DO recreate what you see on the page
Observational skills are important but not simply for copying what you meet. Employ your observational skills to analyze your subject'southward unique shapes so you can reinterpret it on the page. That means you aren't copying counters of the body. Instead you're recreating a figure on the page from the footing up.
You start by capturing its movement in a gesture, rebuild the effigy three-dimensionally using basic spheres, boxes and cylinders, and so sculpt those simple shapes into anatomical forms. This is a very dissimilar process than just replicating what you encounter.
You're combining what yous meet with your 3D cognition of anatomy to recreate the figure on the page. This will not only assist you to develop cartoon that accept a sense of mass but likewise will allow you to accommodate and change the figure to create something new.
This is just a fun drawing to aid illustrate that you need to understand the 3D shapes of a effigy and then you lot can reassemble them on the folio. This is a different way of thinking than simply copying the contours you see.
The Takeaway:
The job of an creative person isn't to replicate what he or she sees. It is to interpret what he or she understands. When cartoon a figure, you bring in your knowledge of anatomy and volume to draw a figure rather than just copying contours and values.
5. Exercise pay attention to proportions and anatomy
To draw a realistic figure, y'all need to pay attention to accurately capture the figure's proportions and anatomy. This comes from both studying beefcake and having expert observational skills.
DON'T be overly rigid.
Anatomy and proportion are important. But lonely, they don't brand for an interesting drawing. A figure drawing that feels similar it has personality or appears dynamic is going to be more interesting than one that is technically correct.
Let the anatomy and proportion take a supporting role to the underlying gesture drawing. Every step of your drawing should exist to create a unified figure that has free energy and attitude even if that means altering the figure's proportions or anatomy to better emphasize that activeness.
This figure has exaggerated proportions – similar to those used in way drawing. It doesn't matter that it's non correctly proportioned if the decision to exaggerate is purposeful. Y'all can find many examples of artists who misconstrue and exaggerate proportions for stylistic reasons.
The Takeaway:
Drawing great anatomy helps artists create realistic-looking figures that appear to have actual mass and volume. However, the beefcake needs to add together to the sense of move of the figure and non distract from it. You must have the skill to exist able to depict the muscles in 3D in order to modify and adapt the shapes and emphasize the motion and personality of your subjects.
More Resource on Cartoon Anatomy and Figures
- iii Mistakes You Make When Cartoon the Figures
- Figure Drawing Methods of the Masters
- Drawing Dynamic Human Figures
- Train Your Middle With Figure Sketching
- 5 Figure Cartoon Tips
Source: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-techniques/beginner-artist/drawing-anatomy-for-beginners/