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7/27/2019 All Things Vector

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Drawing people part 1

As a follow up to our recent tutorial, Draw a Face Using Simple Shapes, weve decided totake things a step further and show how to draw an entire body. We wont be using as

many simple shapes as we did for the face: theres a little more drawing involved. But dont

worry, its very easy! But before we dive in, we need to discuss some very important

considerations when drawing the human figure.

Since weve got a lot to cover were splitting this tutorial into 2 parts. This first tutorial will

cover the basics of proportion, anatomy, and other things to keep in mind when drawing

people. The second tutorial will apply these principles to a vector illustration. Lets get

started!

> Click here to skip ahead to the second part of this tutorial

How Important is Proportion When Drawing People?

Nothing can screw up a drawing of a person more quickly than wonky proportions! A

couple of years ago, I teamed up with the incomparable Fanlie Rosier (member

absolutely_frenchy on iStock ) for an article on figure drawing. We strongly suggest you

check it out, but lets also run over the basics here as well!

Measuring With Head-Lengths


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Lets look at how the human body is structured. The neat thing about drawing people is,

you can use body parts to accurately measure the size and positioning of other body

parts: No ruler necessary.

A persons height can accurately determined by the length of their head (head-length).

This sounds super weird but it really does work. If you look at a photo of a person, you will

see that people are 7 to 7 1/2 heads tall. Go ahead and try it: Use a ruler to mark the

head-length, then see how many heads make up the entire person. In real life, you can

also hold up a pencil and mark a head height with your thumb, then move the pencil up the

body to see how many marked head heights you get. This will get you some strange looks

from strangers in public spaces.

Heres how a figures body measures out according to our head-length scale:


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Here are two lovely ladies measured on ourhead scale.

First head-length will be, of course, the persons head

The second head-length down will be the chest (nipples)

The third head-length down will be the belly button

The fourth head-length down will be the groin

The fifth head-length falls at mid-thigh


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The sixth head-length falls a little below the knee

The seventh head-length falls between mid-calf and the ankle (shinbone)

The seventh and a half head-length will be the bottom of the feet

Head-lengths arent just for measuring height, however. There are plenty of other things that

can be measured by head-lengths:

Shoulders should be one head-length wide each

Feet are one head-length long

A persons elbows will fall roughly at their waist level, between the third and fourth head-

length

Standing sideways, a fit mans chest will be one head-length thick

A forearm is similar in length to the foot: approximately one head-length long

Other Proportional Tips and Tricks

Some other handy proportional facts:

A spread fingered hand will cover a persons face almost perfectly

Just like the body, a human face can be measured too: this time, by eye length!

A persons inside ankle bone will be slightly higher than their outside ankle bone

Women have wider hips than men

A persons height is roughly the same as the width of their outstretched arms

The top of a persons ears will align horizontally with their eyes

A persons eyes will fall halfway down their face

A persons fingertips will fall around mid-thigh when arm is held straight against the body


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Note how the hand is comparable in size to the face.

Children

Just when we thought we had proportions all figured out, weve noticed that our head-lengthmeasurements dont apply to everybody Children are a whole different ball game indeed!

If youve ever seen a newborn baby, the first thing youll see is that their heads are very

large compared to an adult. As they grow up, the head will become smaller in proportion to

the rest of their bodies.

Some considerations for drawing children include:

Very young childrens height can be measured in about four head-lengths

By age 7, children will have grown to around six head-heights tall

A babys forehead is much wider than an adults and the eyes are slightly lower on the


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face

Young children will have slightly protruding stomachs

A babys eyes are around the same size as an adults, so they will appear much larger

on the face

Children have much softer angles than an adult (the younger the child, the more baby fat

there will be on the body), so use lots of curves and rounded edges

Children are very active so dont draw them in stiff, straight poses

The hands and feet of children are pudgier than adults, and fingers and toes will be

smaller

Note that the childrens heads are larger compared to their bodies than the adults heads,

and that their eyes are larger.

What Else Affects Proportion?

Weve shown how the human body can be measured using head-lengths. But what about

when the parts of the body move, bend, or are positioned closer/further away from us?


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Here is an example of how the body bends.

Balance

As a body bends in one direction, something is going to have to move in another direction

to compensate. Think of a teeter-totter: As one end goes up, another comes down. A

human can raise their arms above their head no problem, but when they start to lift a leg,

their weight is going to have to shift or theyll fall over!

If the upper body bends to the right, the hips and/or legs will have to push to the left to

maintain balance. If the upper body bends forwards to touch their toes, their butt will push

outwards to the back. If the upper body bends over backwards to stretch, the hips will

move forward out over their toes. The more extreme the movement the more extreme the

compensation will have to be!


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When the bodyupperbodyorlimbs move, the rest of the body moves in the other

direction to compensate.

Our Angles and Curves

Whether a body part is angular or curved is determined by whats going on under our skin.

Dont worry, were not going to get into an in-depth anatomy class here! But it is important

to understand the difference between muscle, fat and bone particularly when drawing

men and women, who are quite different to draw!

Skeleton


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Lets start with the human skeleton. You can see one on wikipedia if you dont happen to

have one handy, or if you happened to toss the ones from your closet out during this years

spring cleaning. You dont need to memorize all of the bones (unless you want to). What

you need to pay attention to here is which bones are where, and their general sizes and

shapes.

The first bone Id like to mention is the pelvic bone, the big butterfly shaped one near the

middle of the body. This is a very heavy bone, and its important to note that womens and

mens pelvic bones are a little bit different. A womans pelvic bone is wider because it has

to be large enough to birth a baby. So when youre drawing, keep this in mind!

The forearms and lower legs of humans are actually made of 2 bones, not just one like

upper arms and thighs. You cant easily see these bones when looking at a person, but

when someone tenses their hands or twists their wrists, you can start to see the bone

structure as the skin and muscles pull tight. Its common to exaggerate this on comic-

book styled men to make them appear more ripped and powerful.


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You can see the human ribcage is a cylindrical shape and that it doesnt extend all the

way down the torso: This gives us the curvature of our waists. For women, this curvature is

often very exaggerated to show femininity and sex appeal.

At the base of the neck, theres a small bone called the clavicle that travels from our

shoulders inward to the centre of our chests. When you look at a fit or slender person the

clavicle bones are apparent as long thin horizontal bumps that sit just below the end of the

neck. Its common to draw the clavicle as it gives nice definition to a persons upper chest

area.

The last thing well draw your attention to are the knees. Note that theyre surprisingly large

and made up of a ball-and-socket type arrangement of bones. When drawing women, its

common to skip excess definition of the knee area, whereas when drawing muscular men,

the knees are often exaggerated as the thigh muscles start just above the knee area.

Muscles

Now that we know how the skeleton affects the way that humans look, its time to look at

muscles. Because humans really dont look the way that skeleton did! There are layers

and layers of muscles (and internal organs, of course) stacked on top of our skeletons so

its important to pay attention to their sizes, shapes and positions.

Here is a pretty good example of the muscles in the human body. There are a lot of them!

There are also detailed breakdowns by muscle group available here.

The biggest thing youll notice is how muscles have filled out the skimpy bits of our

skeleton: the upper thighs, the upper arms, the chest and the abdomen. Youd hardly know

that the forearm and lower legs on a humans skeleton are made of two bones, and look

much thicker than the upper arm and thigh under the muscles when youve stripped away

the muscles! The area under the ribcage is also filled in (with both muscles and internal

organs).

Some things to note about muscles:

The muscles in the thighs are very long and there are a lot of them

Back muscles are large, and on men, are often exaggerated to show strength

Upper arms are typically drawn to focus on 2 muscles: the bicep and the tricep

On women, muscles are usually softened and drawn without much shading

The calf is shaped like an upside-down heart: When flexed, a drawing of a muscular man

should show this definition

Shoulders are their own muscle and shouldnt be drawn as extensions of the arm


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muscles

The muscles in a humans neck are vertical and from the front form a V shape

Pectoral muscles (the chest) are drawn much, much larger on men than on women

The abdominal muscles cluster vertically at the centre of the torso they give the six

pack definition on muscular men

Muscles look different depending on whether they are flexed or not Keep this in mind as

youre drawing a moving or laboring character and plan accordingly

Skin and Fat Deposits

The last thing to keep in mind while drawing people is how skin covers our bodies, and how

fat is distributed underneath this skin. Skin isnt just a thin layer stretched out over our

muscles! Our skin is made up of many layers of varying thicknesses depending on where it

rests on our bodies. For example, the skin on a human face is much thinner than it is on

our backs.

Skin also changes as we age. It becomes thinner as we get older, and of course, starts to

wrinkle. Since aging skin gets less blood flow over time, it looks less voluminous and isnt

as stretchy and elastic as it is when were children. This is important to note when drawing

elderly characters.

Skin is very elastic, but, its not completely elastic! As we bend and twist, skin can createfolds. A good example is bending over to touch our toes: Creases will be created in the

skin over our tummies. How deep these creases are depend on how our fat is deposited.

Some areas of the body contain more fat under our skin than others. Areas such as our


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forearms and shins rarely collect fat, whereas our bellies, hips, and thighs can put on

weight rather easily depending on our body types. Faces can also show the effects of fat,

rounding out our cheeks and creating a lump under our chins (a double chin). Children in

particular look pudgy and rounded compared to adults due to their baby fat.

Fat distribution is very different between men and women! The most obvious example is, of

course, breasts. One common newbie mistake is to draw breasts as perfect half circles

sitting atop a womans chest: This isnt how breats are shaped (well, not unless a surgeon

has intervened with nature!). Since breasts contain a lot of fat, they tend to slope

downwards on a womans chest. Think of filling a water balloon with fluid, then holding it by

the base of the balloon and holding it base-side-up it against a wall: The liquid will settle at

the base of the balloon, creating more of a pear shape than a round beach ball shape.

Women generally have a higher fat percentage than men do. As such, their bodies are

often drawn as softer and rounder, whereas men are more angular. Body fat can also give

people very different shapes: rounded (weight stays towards the middle of the body andtapers off towards the upper torso and legs), pear shaped (where the weight sits low on the

body in the thighs and lower torso), box-shaped (where the torso carries weight but the

arms and legs remain thin), and so on. Its fun to experiment with different figure shapes,

especially when drawing caricatures and cartoony-styled characters.

Remember: Even if youre drawing an overweight person, there are still muscles, organs

and bones underneath the weight! Just because someone is carrying excess weight, there

is still structure to be observed when drawing.

Reference

If you really love drawing people, the best thing that you can do is to surround yourself with

lots of reference materials. For example, drawing hands is extremely tricky, but if you leave

them out of your drawing youre missing out on one of the most expressive parts of the

body! So what I do is keep a folder on my desktop of snapshots Ive taken of hands from

every angle. Ive cropped them out of my photos and have them in an easy to find place, so

if I ever need a hand holding an object, or a hand with the index finger extended, or a hand

balled up into a fist, it only takes me seconds to find accurate photographic reference!


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Here is an example of a reference photo being used to draw a semi-realistic hand.

Other great drawing tools are wooden dummies. You can get them quite cheaply at most

art supply stores and they are fully poseable like a real person. The joints in a dummy

work exactly like a persons joints do: elbows and knees bend one way, while ankles,

wrists, necks and waists are constructed in such a way to offer a wider range of motion.

You can even buy wooden dummies of hard-to-draw body parts like hands!

Using What We Know And Putting Our Own Spin On Proportion

We now know how a real human is constructed. But as illustrators, we dont necessarily

need to follow the rules Mother Natures set out for us!

In many illustrations, youll notice that head-to-body proportions can look very different.

Some people like to draw smaller bodies with very large heads to create cute, cartoony

caricatures (and maximize on facial expressions). In classic comic book illustrations,

heads will be much smaller in order to make the bodies look more heroic and muscular. In

fact, comic books will often make the heads so small that the bodies could end up being 8,

10, or more head-lengths!

There are many different styles of proportional exaggeration out there. Some of the most

common:

Increasing the hip and bust widths on a woman while decreasing the waist width (like

Barbie dolls) to look more feminine

Increasing the shoulder width on men to make them look stronger

Making legs on both men and women longer to look graceful

Extreme shading on mens muscles, and the addition of veins, to show strength


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(particularly in comic book styles)

Drawing eyes and lips larger on women to look more expressive and feminine

Increasing muscle sizes on men (biceps, calves, etc) to look more powerful

Making womens feet smaller to look delicate

Less articulation in joints (elbows, knees, etc) to give a cartoony, goofy look

Avoiding shading on womens muscles (abs, thighs, etc) to look more delicate and

graceful

Exaggerated postures (extremely slumping shoulders, etc) to show emotions more

clearly

In the above example, the womans limbs are extremelyelongated to look elegant and

lean, and her hips and bust have been exaggerated forsex appeal. Herhead-length to

bodyratio is about 8 head-lengths.

The possibilities are literally endless! But always remember the basics of proportion, even

when exaggerating. Otherwise your illustration could just end up looking wrong.


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16 THOUGHTS ON DRAWING PEOPLE PART 1

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Click here for Part 2: Drawing Pe ople

2009 Jennifer Borton

Li'l C

on May 3, 2012 at 3:48 pm said:

hi, i was wondering what do you call this kind of drawing style? i tried searching for

retro-style drawings but this kind of drawing usually does not come up in the

search engine.

0 0 Rate This

bortonia

on May 16, 2012 at 2:19 pm said:

I dont think the style really has a name, to be honest. Its just how I like to

draw. You could call it graphically simplified I suppose!

0 1 Rate This

JMK

on April 1, 2012 at 6:54 am said:

Wonderful, have liked the vivid step-by-step description. Congrates!

0 0 Rate This


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murrumbadownsbeautyclinic

on March 30, 2012 at 11:00 am said:

can you give us some examples of doing hair especially clown hair

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bortonia

on March 30, 2012 at 12:55 pm said:

Funny you should mention clowns. I recently provided some feedback for a

contributor on iStock:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=330246

If you scroll down towards the bottom of this thread, youll see Ive done a

side-by-side comparison, and my clown is on the right. To create the hair I

used a dashed outline like I did in this tutorial:

http://bortonia.wordpress. com/tutorials/beginner/making-a-lacy-valentine-

using-stroke-effects/

Then, I added crescent moon shaped pieces to look like highlights, andused darker reds to create shadows near the base of the hair. I hope this

helps!

0 1 Rate This

NII

on November 16, 2010 at 1:47 am said:

AGYEI! This is great stuff, let us have more

0 0 Rate This


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Pingback: How To Illustrate Human Body - Proportion Tutorial | Design Inspiration

and Resource

drawing people! THANKS!

0 1 Rate This

Derky

on September 4, 2009 at 12:14 pm said:

very helpful!! i cant wait until you post the 2nd part =)

0 1 Rate This

Neha

on September 3, 2009 at 1:27 pm said:

Hi,

Thanks for the such good and useful tuts.I have created some vector faces from the

help of ur tutus.

Hope to see more interesting tuts on the same topic .

Thanks

0 1 Rate This

Brad C

on August 20, 2009 at 1:13 pm said:

Wow, very descriptive and some great information on here. Ill definitely have to

come back and reread sometime for reference.


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2 2 Rate This

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