Tutorial Tuesday is here, and this week we’re going to tackle the Female Figure in comics. The basic tutorials and tips I’m going to discuss here applies to drawing females in your typical American mainstream action-hero style. You’ll notice that females vary greatly from genre to genre – you wouldn’t necessarily use some of the tips in this tutorial to draw females in manga, or if you were doing an Indie style comic Click here to continue…

After a little bit of a layoff, idrawdigital returns with a Tutorial Tuesday post – this time we’re going to learn about developing a character sheet featuring a series of different action poses. By creating a character sheet, you can always refer to it while you’re drawing your digital comics to ensure that your character design is consistent from every angle. Click here to continue…

Welcome to the second half of Tutorial Tuesday! Drawing hands and feet has been the bane of a number of budding artists. Even some professionals skirt the issue of drawing these parts correctly by conveniently hiding them behind other characters or placed items such as rubble, machinery, etc. Click here to continue…

It’s “Tutorial Tuesday” once again at idrawdigital. This week I’m going to show you how to prep and draw a simple base file in Photoshop to create your own character turnarounds. These sheets are absolutely vital in keeping your characters looking consistent from all angles. By having this handy reference, you’ll be able to compare it to your current drawing for any inaccuracies. Click here to continue…

It’s time for a new digital drawing tutorial. Today we’re going to focus on a basic fundamental of character drawing – head shapes. There are a number of different methods to drawing heads and faces, and in this tutorial, you’ll learn a few different ones than you may have seen before. Since we will be doing this entire sketch digitally, you’ll notice certain shortcuts and techniques you can use to speed up your workflow. Click here to continue…

Hi folks, I’ve created a series of new tutorials focusing on drawing action poses. It’s one thing to be able to draw your favorite characters in a static setting, facing the front, either full length or partially in view. But what about drawing your figures in dynamic action sequences? Never fear, gang – idrawdigital is here – with a few tips on how to develop your own action sequences for your comics. This series of brief tutorials will show you how to set up a wide range of action poses and rough in your forms. This first tutorial will focus on the classic martial arts move: the side kick. Click here to continue…

In the previous drawing post, I touched upon the differences between males and females when attempting to draw correct proportions. This time around, we’re going to look at the differences in the human form as it progressively ages.

We all know that a small child is not built to the same proportions as a grown man/woman – so in order for your drawing to accurately represent a human in all walks of life, you need to understand the ratios for those specific age groups.

Proportions between adults and children

Note the following proportion differences:

• Adult = 8 heads tall, with a head size of 9 inches
• 15 year old = 7 1/2 heads tall with a head size of 9 inches
• 10 year old = 7 heads tall with a head size of 7 1/2 inches
• 5 years old = 6 heads tall with a head size of 7 inches
• 3 years old = 5 heads tall with a head size of 6 1/2 inches
• 1 year old = 4 heads tall with a head size of 6 inches

According to Andrew Loomis, the creator of this chart from Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth – there is a gradual increase in the size of the head of about 3 inches from a toddler to an adult. As the body progresses to shape itself, you’ll note that the legs of the subject will extend at about twice the rate of the torso. These heights are all relative, but act as a great guide for creating proper proportions for a man, woman and child if they are all in the same viewing area.

Try out the following exercise:

1. Much like the previous entry on proportion, do some freehand sketches to note the difference between a child’s proportions and an adult’s proportions. Remember the number of head units needed for each.
2. Try an anterior, posterior and lateral set of views.
3. Remember to modify the look of the young child to resemble a young child (pudginess, wide eyes, lack of muscular definition) otherwise you will run the risk of drawing your figure to resemble a dwarf/little person.
4. Move on to your computer and try out the exercise using the guide lines from your drawing software to create exact proportions.
5. Compare and adjust as necessary.

You should now understand the concept of proportions and have a better grasp of creating realism through the use of varying sizes and shapes and body types of the human form. Check back for my next entry which will deal with proportions in relation to space/perspectives.

Learning how to draw the Human Form efficiently and effectively takes a lot of time, practice and patience. I don’t pretend to be a master of anatomically correct drawing, but I do attempt to consult my charts and references often when I am trying to establish a believable looking figure. Understanding the structure of the human body and its extents and limits is the key in creating forms that are lifelike and realistic in a relative sense – you could be doing life drawings and attempt to be infinitely realistic, or you may be making simplistic cartoons or caricatures which should have some semblance of being anatomically correct.

There are many current and aspiring artists who neglect to refer to the basic fundamentals of anatomy and proportion and dismiss blatant errors as drawing in their own particular style. I’m not going to argue about being right and being wrong in this aspect, but if a body appears jarring and awkward to most people, chances are you’ve done something wrong when you were putting the pieces together. If something isn’t right about a figure that is meant to resemble the human form, (something that you are completely connected to and know and understand) you’ll notice right away. At times – when you draw it yourself, you become so engrossed in your work that you overlook the obvious. To avoid these embarrassing mistakes, make sure you take some time to review the basics of the human form and study the details before leaping into drawing subjects you don’t have a lot of practice with.

Here’s some examples of anatomically correct proportions that you should adhere to in order to achieve realistic looking figures. These images are courtesy of Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth by Andrew Loomis.

Proportions - Male

Note that you’ll want to determine the height of your male on page, divide the height by 8, and work from there – you’ll see there are specific ratios for certain areas of the body. The measurements are determined by head units – one of the 8 divisions you set up is the size of the human head – everything is in relation to that one size.

• The body width = 2 1/3 heads
• The body height = 8 heads
• Distance between nipples on chest = 1 head
• Width of calf muscles together at lower arc = 1 head
• Bottom of the knees = 2 heads from ground level

For further reference, the diagram has a scale in feet to give you an idea of where certain body parts would be in relation to the heights/widths of other objects (vehicles, furniture, etc)

Proportions - Female

For women, the ratios differ slightly as the average form is smaller then the form of an average man. The overall height is measured in 8 Head Units, but because the female head is proportionately smaller, the figure will be smaller.

• The body width = 2 heads wide
• Waist = 1 head wide
• Buttocks = 1 1/2 heads wide
• Width of calf muscles together at mid-point = 1 head wide
• Bottom of the knees = 2 heads from ground level

Now you can alter the proportions slightly to exaggerate features, but you shouldn’t stray too far from the aforementioned guidelines, otherwise your figures will appear alien and awkward. Here’s a diagram with some variations in human proportion.

Variations in Proportion

Loomis mentions the standard proportion technique causes the figures to appear “dumpy and old-fashioned”. This technique uses a ratio of 7 1/2 head units for the height, and is the standard taught in most institutions and courses of study. In order to create more of a well defined form, some exaggeration is needed, so the ideal proportion technique was developed, to act as an alternative to the standard proportions. The fashion industry proportion exaggerates even further and extends the form an extra head unit taller than standard measurement to give the illusion of beauty through elongated lines. Finally, an example of extreme exaggeration of form to create a grandiose, super-human figure comes from the heroic proportion model. Most sculptors in the Classic period, fantasy artists and comic book illustrators who draw large, muscular hero type characters use this ratio.

To successfully learn basic human proportion, try the following exercises.

1. Do a series of sketches on paper first to get the feeling for drawing human forms based on head units.
2. Make sure you draw three views – Anterior (front), Lateral (side) and Posterior (back). This will give you a good sense of where parts should be in relation to others.
3. Repeat the process a number of times and make a wide variety of body types using the other proportion techniques (standard, ideal, fashion, heroic) If you do this enough times, you’ll get the hang of the proportions of body parts a lot faster than assuming they should be a certain way and drawing by trial and error. You wont make blatant mistakes either.

Once your sketches have been completed, open up your drawing software and repeat the exercise. This time, use the guides to help you make your divisions. The reason I didn’t get you to do this from the start was to force you to use your eye and judgement to create the unit divisions visually. The first few drawings may have been terrible because the divisions weren’t 100% equal. That is perfectly fine. No person is 100% proportioned, anyway. This is an average guide that you can use to learn the fundamentals of human form. Once you become comfortable with this average proportion scale, you can modify it for skinny people, fat people etc. For now, lets continue on with the digital portion of the exercise.

1. Follow the same steps as the sketch version, using the drawing software guides to aid you in your proportions.
2. Do not worry about erasing or making the perfect figure (with enough practice you wont even need the guides)
3. If you have a scanner, scan some of your sketches and compare them against your digital version – are the proportions similar?

What you are essentially doing is conditioning yourself to draw the human form in proportion consistently. After doing some gesture drawings, bust out a proportioned human form if you feel you’re not quite getting the sizes down right. Then go back to your subject and try it again.

I hope this short lesson helps you improve on your technique. I’ll elaborate in more detail on other methods to capture the human form through drawing.