When I draw the human body, my process can be divided into three classifications. Skeleton figure, mannequin, and the muscles. Now I will warn you, there's gonna be a bunch of yapping more than usual because I'm gonna include some measurements, ratios, and real anatomy. So it's gonna feel like homework but trust me, it's gonna be worth it. First, let's divide the body using three boxes.
This is gonna represent the three major sections of the body. This is gonna include the head, ribcage, and the pelvis. These are the three most important parts when constructing the body.
And it's going to help us lay down foundation. Because this solves a lot of problems that we don't even have yet. And it's going to be a bunch of stuff, but it's mainly proportions. Now let's move on with the measurements. Let's say the head is one unit in width and 1.2 in height.
Now that's just a rough measurement and it doesn't stay consistent all the time. Now let's use the head as a unit of measurement. So the width of the rib cage is measured almost two heads and has the height of one and a half. The pelvis has the same width of the rib cage but has the height of one head.
Now there are spaces in between the shapes but sometimes it changes and I mostly base it off my instincts and it's usually like this. Now the next step is drawing them in three dimension. We are essentially placing down the foundation where we can lay the muscles and details without thinking of complicated anatomy just yet because for me I tend to overthink stuff. But sometimes in drawing, the simpler the better.
We can use these three cubes to break down any pose we want, no matter how complex the pose is, as long as you lay down the boxes properly. This will improve how we perceive the human body for the better. You can study references using this technique to help you understand it more.
Drawing detailed skeleton structures is not really necessary when drawing figures, but it's something that you have to study at least once because it's fun, and it will benefit you in the long run. But I did say the simpler the better, so for now we'll stick with simplified skeleton. We'll also use the three core parts of the body, which is the head, ribcage, and the pelvis.
Starting with the skull, mostly simplify it by drawing a circle and a cube, then add some guidelines. Sometimes you can do them with a bit more detail. I also use this line which you can imagine as a spine that connects the core parts. For the ribcage, I always draw an egg. The reason why I'm able to draw the body consistently is because I use this technique called landmarks, which helps me place the most significant parts of the body and guide me through.
The landmarks for the ribcage are the collarbone, sternum, and the bottom, coastal cartilage. These parts will help you keep the upper part of the body in proportion later on. The collarbone is important because you can use it as a guide to connect the shoulders.
The sternum is the bone in the middle of the ribcage, and around it is the coastal cartilage. But we only need the bottom part because this curve is kinda the most important part in the ribcage. Before we can move on to the arms, we have to be familiar with the shoulders first. The landmarks here is gonna be the head of the humerus and the scapula. These are important because if there's any movement in the arm, these guys are responsible for that.
The collarbone is also a useful guide to make sure that both of the humerus head are in line with each other. Though remember that they're independent from each other and wouldn't exactly mirror each other's movement. So don't rely on a straight line. Instead, break them in half and imagine this v-shaped pattern. Now the arms is pretty easy.
The upper bone for the arm is called the humerus. Don't forget to add circles. This would act as your joints.
And the lower arm has two bones called radius and ulna. This can get complicated because they sometimes get a little twisty. For now we're gonna simplify the hands as a square. Next is the pelvis.
We can just draw them as a simple box and add a centerline. But when you can, try to draw them. Even a simplified version will do. Next is we'll add the legs.
The femur or the leg bone is the longest bone in the body and it is attached to the side of the pelvis and you would notice both of the femur are tilting inwards. For the knees we'll just draw a circle for now. Next is the shin bone. Unlike the upper they're kind of straight with two bones just like the forearm.
Then we'll just draw a triangle for the feet. If we oversimplify that skeleton structure we'll have this. Sorry about that. We actually have this.
Skeleton figures are the best way to make a proper structure if you're going for a full pose. This will ensure that your body isn't awkward. And by doing this, you are solving one of the main problems when drawing the body, which is again, proportions.
For the proportions, it really depends on the age, gender, and the style. But let's just do an average adult for this study. Standards can be changed a bit, especially for female.
But the ideal standard is asymmetrical proportions. The head is going to be our main basis. So the average body is roughly around 3 heads wide and around 9 to 8 heads tall. The upper and lower arm should have the same length, with the elbow located just below the ribcage. While the length of the lower arm should reach the bottom part of the pelvis and the hand should reach the middle part of the upper legs.
The legs is also divided by the knees and make sure both of the upper and lower leg have the same length. This video is sponsored by Skillshare. Learning new art skills is crucial when you want to grow as an artist, like learning new techniques and fundamentals.
But how? Thankfully, we have Skillshare for that. Skillshare is an online learning community that offers thousands of classes on a wide range of topics.
These classes are designed to help individuals learn new skills, improve their existing skills, and connect with like-minded people. Skillshare offers thousands of classes taught by industry professionals in fields such as film, illustration, design, freelancing, productivity, and more. Also, Skillshare has this thing called Learning Paths to provide a structured way for users to gain in-depth knowledge and skills in a specific area. These curated collections of classes are designed to guide you through progressively advanced topics, helping you build a strong foundation and expand your expertise. For example, we have this interesting learning path for figure drawing, which is really useful if you want to get better at drawing characters.
They teach all the necessary stuff for anatomy like gesture, structure, proportions, and other stuff. that is being taught by a master artist and instructor, so I highly recommend checking it out. Join Skillshare right now and for the first 500 people to use my link in the description, you'll receive 1 month free trial of Skillshare. Big thanks to Skillshare, now back to the video.
Alright, once you're done with proportions, we can now add solid shapes to give the figure a 3-dimensional feel. This phase is often referred to as the mannequin stage. Essentially, you add basic 3D shapes like spheres, cylinders, boxes, and any other forms to create basic structure. By doing this, adding muscles and more detailed features becomes easier later on.
This phase doesn't require extensive anatomy skills because all we're doing is adding dimensions to the already existing stick figure. It's more about knowing how to draw decent 3D shapes and understanding a bit of how space works. Start by overlaying simple geometric shapes on your stick figure.
For example, use a cylinder for the arms and legs, a box for the torso, and a sphere for the head. An important detail I tend to include in my drawings is a guideline. I use an extra line to have a visual cue on where the middle part is, and it's a useful line that tells you where the shape is facing.
You have to make sure that the shape aligns correctly with the proportions and perspective of your initial sketch. This helps maintain the figure's balance in pose. Knowing joints is crucial in figure drawing because it helps you understand which parts of the body can bend and move. Recognizing and accurately depicting these joint points ensures that your figure look natural and believable in their poses.
The main joints to focus on are the shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles. And there are also others like the fingers. Adjust the shapes to better match the contours of the body. This means slightly curving the cylinders for the limbs and refining the box for the torso to indicate the rib cage and pelvis. This is something that you would naturally learn once you study actual anatomy, which we'll do later.
Okay, moving on to muscle anatomy. Now that we have structure, we can now play some simple shapes that resembles the muscle anatomy. Starting with the torso.
Around the neck, there's this thing called sternocleidomastoid, which is a pair of long muscles that is sometimes visible in some anime like Jojo. Dragon Ball and other anime that has realistic anatomy included in their style. Next is the trapezius, which is the muscle next to the neck that also continues off with the deltoid, which is a part of the arm, but we'll get to that later. Next is we'll use the collarbone to indicate where the shoulders are leveled at. From here, we can continue with the chest.
By drawing a line in the middle of the collarbone, this line would also be the basis for the abs later on. The chest would be right around here. We'll use the points from the shoulders to connect the chest area. Always remember that the chest is always located above this curve, which as we learned earlier, is the bottom costal cartilage.
Next is the latissimus dorsi. It's basically the muscle in the back, but it can sometimes poke out right next to the serratus anterior, which is located on the side of the body. This part.
First, draw a line from the chest, and then draw zigzag lines, or a bunch of W's, and then raise a straight line. From there, we're going to draw lines from the corners. and redraw it in three dimension.
Make sure that it's wrapping around the body. Next is the external obliques. Now we can divide it into two parts, the upper and the lower.
The upper one is the part that is on the ribcage and the lower one is below the ribcage. I'm not really sure but I think it's also called the internal oblique. The upper one is always projecting some parts of the ribcage while the lower one is just pure muscles that doesn't have that much texture compared to the upper. Moving on with the abs.
First, we're going to follow the curve from the ribcage. Then it's going to recede all the way down and then add three lines to divide the abs into six packs. Then there's going to be one big ab just below that.
From there, it's all about refining the shape to make it look like a muscle. Moving on to the arms. Imagine the arms like a chain that is alternating while grabbing to each other. Then let's divide the arms into two parts. The upper arm and the forearm.
Starting with the upper part, this is the deltoid. When I draw the deltoid, I always think about the liver. I know it's a weird reference, but it definitely works.
Kinda. Most of the time. After that, we have three muscles below the deltoid. The bicep, the brachialis, and the triceps.
The triceps is located at the back of the arms, but sometimes you would see some parts of it at the front. It's an upside down heart-shaped muscle that is connected to the elbow. Looking at the side, we have the brachialis, a small muscle that is in between the tricep and the bicep being shaped by the muscles around it.
Now you might be familiar with the bicep already since it's the most flexed muscle of all time. To draw this, it's pretty simple. You can imagine it as a box with soft edges with a couple of muscle forms that kind of looks like a bean. Moving on to the forearm.
Now imagine the forearm as a really long cube. Then there's going to be a bunch of muscles that wraps around it. These are those muscles.
These muscles occupy more than half of the forearm. The rest is just like a cylinder. In simpler terms, we have this.
It's gonna be pretty hard to process all of this information, but you can always group them together to make it less complicated. Take note of these imbalances that have this diagonal stretch. This is gonna be a recurring pattern with all the muscles all around the body. So yeah, try to get a feel for these shapes. Again, you don't have to memorize all the names.
It is much better if you know what they look like. Before we can get into the legs, let's first establish the hips, because this will be the basis for the rest of the lower body. So it's really important.
The hips is a projection of the pelvis and the thigh bone. That is why there's gonna be some bumps around here, because of the bones poking out. So it's really important to not draw them flat like this. Now we can move on with the upper legs.
First, get a basic skeleton structure of the legs, then add cylinders for the legs. Make sure that there's a gap. between the legs because they're not actually connected.
We can also add the hip detail here. After getting a decent form, we can now add some muscles. There are several muscles in the legs.
Let's start with the sartorius by drawing a diagonal line. With that, we've already separated the inner thigh from the outer. There's also a portion of the gluteus on each side so let's add that real quick.
The gluteus is located at the backside. but some of it can be seen from the front as well. Next we have these three muscles here, and they're called quadriceps femoris, or quads for short. So there's actually four of them, but only three are visible.
The other one is behind the middle one, so not really important, I think. Next, let's go over to the knees. Draw a three-cylinder. This is the upper leg that's tilting inwards, and this is the middle part. This is gonna be the knees.
And the last one is the lower leg, which pushes outward. Then add a square around the kneecap and divide it in the middle. Now, just add a bunch of muscle details.
And that's probably it. Pretty easy, right? Now for the lower leg. From the knees, we're gonna draw the shinbone. Slightly curving, then the outer leg is gonna follow that curve.
After that, the inside would have this small muscle before falling straight down. We can also add the ankles and the feet from there. Now, remember the diagonal pattern I told you earlier? Well, you can apply them here.
This diagonal stretches is going to help you place proper proportions of the muscle. So, always keep these patterns in mind. It's pretty useful.
Now, you might say that this is all excessive and you don't think that you're going to need this because you want to draw in much simpler style and that's probably true. But it's better that you have this information because this is the fundamental that makes the body realistic. Even if you don't plan on drawing muscular characters, this would still exist no matter what the body shape is. Once you master the muscles, you can really draw characters however you want.
Once you master this, you can freely manipulate every part of the human body while still having a basis from the actual fundamental itself. Here's a tip when you're drawing anatomy. You don't actually want to draw the exact anatomy.
You want to draw the shapes that looks like anatomy. Because drawing a perfect copy of something is really difficult. Don't think in 2D.
Always think in 3D. That is why when you understand to draw in 3D, it's gonna be much easier to draw realistically. Because one of the fundamentals that makes everything real is space, and the best representation of that is the cube.
It's very simple yet it allows you to make complicated drawings. This was one of the few essential things that I learned when I was just starting out, which really helped me a lot. And that's it for this guide. Hopefully this helps.
God bless and I'll see you in the next one. Peace!