How to Draw a Body

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

     Drawing a human body is a challenging project, but there are some simple, basic steps that may make it easier. Humans come in many shapes and sizes, so the actual proportions described here may vary.

Steps

1. Select a subject, if your drawing will be a portrait, caricature, or a specific type of person, ie, a cowboy, ballerina, or an old man.
   
2. Choose a pose for your subject. Human bodies are dynamic, meaning they move and change position frequently, and they are also viewed from many different angles. Here are examples, and you may choose your pose from these, or make up your own.
   
   • Standing. This may be a side, frontal, rear, or other view, usually easiest to draw since simple proportions may be used to locate and determine the size for each part.
     
   • Sitting. Here, you can view from different angles, and you will find that the legs, hips, and feet may seem to be positioned in unusual ways.
     
   • Reclining. This pose can incorporate the same proportions used in a standing figure, if the body is aligned in a similar fashion to standing.
     
   • In action. Drawing a human form running, jumping, swimming, or in other action poses presents its own unique difficult. You must be able to observe how the shapes of the body change, and proportions are expressed to do this successfully.
     
3. Assume, to begin with, you will draw a frontal view standing figure. This will help you become familiar with the basic shapes of each part of the human anatomy, but for the purpose of this article, we will look at a very simplified version.
   
4. Begin by drawing a stick figure of the basic pose you are to work on. The head will be 1/7 of the height of the figure, the waist will be near the center of the overall height.
   
5. Make the legs about the same distance as the distance from the waist to the center of the face.
   
6. Make your arms, including the hands, if hanging straight beside the torso, reach about half the distance between the knees and the waist.
   
   
   
   
   
7. Locate the places in the arms and legs where they should bend. The upper arm is not as long as the lower arm plus the hand, so the elbow should be nearer the shoulder than the fingertips.
   
8. Look at the length of the leg. The upper leg, or thigh area and lower leg, the shin and ankle, are pretty much the same length, so make the knee near the center in your stick figure.
   
9. Make the shoulder area straight across to begin with, about the same length as the forearm.
   
10. Draw an oval, slightly above the shoulder line, so there will be room for the neck, later. Make the oval shape of the head 1/3 the width of the shoulder, and 1/7 the height of the complete body. This should be only slightly shorter than the forearms.
    
11. Make lines indicating width to the torso, arms, and legs. Because the human body varies so greatly, there is no exact proportion for this step. Thin people may have very thin arms, torso, and legs, whereas, very large people have larger thicknesses of these body parts.
    
    
    
    
    
12. Draw in curves in the individual parts of your body. The chest begins fairly wide, then tapers (for a thin person) slightly, to the waist. From the waist the body becomes wider through the hip area, and tapers down again slightly where the legs attach.
    
    
    
    
    
13. Draw hands, possibly starting with ovals, on each arm, and add fingers or lines to represent them.
    
14. Place feet on the bottom of the legs, making them about 1/2 the length of the shin, and allowing them to curve an bend as you see fit.
    
15. Fill in details for the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and hair as you like.
    
16. Use clothing, long hair, and other details to eliminate difficult parts of the body. A long, flowing dress will make the curves of the hips, and form of the legs much simpler. Shoes will make drawing toes, foot arches, and ankle details unnecessary.
    
17. Shade the drawing to give it depth. Color if desired.
    

Video

Speed drawing of a face and body Tyler Vo is a fine artist who has been drawing for six years.

 

Tips

• Have fun with it draw the person with your favorite style of clothes or particular pose.
  

Warnings

• Don't press the drawing instrument too hard or you'll end up getting
  
• unwanted marks and lines on the paper.
  

Things You'll Need

• Paper, pencil, and desk.
  
• Model or picture to work from.
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Do a Reclining Hero Pose
  
• How to Draw a Human Head
  
• How to Draw Basic Human Figures
  
• How to Draw Real Stuff
  

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