Hello! Welcome to my new art tutorial series. Today we are starting with basic anatomy.
Keep in mind this is for beginners, so I am simplifying the process as much as I can. There is no right or wrong way to draw, and every artist has their own techniques on how they start their drawings. What works for one person might not work for everyone, and that's okay.
This isn't a rulebook, just suggestions that may help you out. Let's get started. All anatomy is really is just basic shapes.
So once you get a hang of what shapes go where and how they work, you should get the hang of it. Now to start, we are going to be drawing this rectangular kind of shape, except it goes inwards at the bottom like this. And now I'm doing a second one on slightly smaller on the bottom.
Now see how it goes inwards in the middle and then a bit outwards on the outside. Now this is going to be your torso. I just drew this line to make it somewhat symmetrical because this is just facing forwards. Now next I am going to be using circles as the joints.
So these are your shoulders. And there I just draw a line kind of where like the chest area would be and the head at the top and the head I will do a video focusing just on that so there isn't going to be much detail there. I just draw a circle and then a bit of a soft v-shape and then the neck.
And adding in some ears too, just for a little bit of extra detail. Next, I'm adjusting that so I'll have room for the legs. Okay, so now you're gonna want to draw a underwear almost kind of shape on the lower rectangle, and draw the circles for the knees and the ankles. And you might be wondering, where are you putting these circles? You just randomly choose where they go?
No, what I do is I try to make the leg part to be around half of the whole body. So the torso and the head should be the same size as the legs. And keeping in mind, like, the knees are half of the ankles and the top.
of the legs. And now I'm connecting them and what I like to do is on the inner part there's a bit of a curve and then on the outside it's more straight. But even if like for this you don't need to focus too much on what the shapes look like they're just kind of like ovals or cylinders or something something like that to connect them. And here I am drawing the feet.
Again, little things like that. I'm not going to go into too much detail. Like I could do another video on feet and hands and stuff later on.
Right now for the arms. Notice how I put the very first circle around the same part as the line between our rectangles. And the second.
is like they're they're halves just remember everything is a half here we are connecting them apologies for the voiceover isn't the greatest this is my first video and hopefully I'll get better as I go along and drawing the hands now to give you a bit of an idea although I said there's no rules there are certain like proportion wise things that like if you want it to look anatomically correct, then here's some things that could help you out a bit just to keep in mind for when you're drawing. So I'm going to move this over a little bit, keeping that half there in mind as one proportion, the legs versus the torso and the head. Also for the hand, like the tip of your fingers should be approximately half of your thigh, so you don't want your fingers touching your knees because if you stand up, you'll see that typically your fingers do not touch your knees if you're standing up straight.
And the arms are, like, the elbow is half of, is, like, in between. between your shoulder and your wrist. So that's also something to keep in mind.
And same with the knees, half of is like in the middle of the top of the leg and the bottom. So lots of halves going on here just to help keep things simple, but I'm gonna get remove those for now so hopefully you get the idea. Alright, now for the side view. I'll usually start, instead of just doing the rectangles, I add a bit of a curve because it isn't, even though you're standing straight, it isn't completely just like straight down.
There is a bit of a curve there. The first rectangle is angled one way and the other one is sort of angled the other way. And also the neck is not going straight up, which is a common mistake lots of artists make.
It's actually going on a bit of an angle. And it's kind of like an oval shape that I draw there, just like it's a bit larger on the top half and then it goes inwards to the smaller circle. And then the second one I do straight line and then a bit of a curve. and adding the feet. Now I'm adding the head and for this I will do like other tutorials showing how to draw the head in a side view.
This is more focused on the body and the proportions. Now for the arm is going to be overlapping the body a little bit because if the arm is at the side Like that's just how it is inside of you. So I'm going to add that.
Even the arm isn't completely straight down, it's like curved slightly just because like your arm just naturally will lie more like that. Now this one might be a little bit more tricky if you're not used to it because it's kind of in between the front view and the side view. I'll often draw a line in the what would be the middle of the torso just to help guide me and figure out like where everything should go.
Now the line isn't actually in the middle of the drawing, it's where the chest would be so it's more on the side. And then I draw the shoulders. and see how it's kind of in between the front view which is like the full width of the body and then the side view which is it's more condensed because it's just the side of the body so it's kind of in the middle it's good for if you're designing characters because that way you could see a little bit of the front and the side now for the bottom half of the torso apologies for my lack of proper anatomy words when you draw the start of the legs or like the part that looks kind of like underwear, I'll draw one side of it is curving one way and the other side is curving the other way just because that's how I like to draw it, like how I feel like it works best instead of both of them curving outwards. It's good to practice all angles of the body when you're first starting to get into learning anatomy because when you're you're going to be drawing from all kinds of different ways. It's more interesting and it's good to understand how the body looks from each angle, to understand like why you're drawing things how you are.
So there's that. Notice how I kept all of the portions the same through all the poses, like all of the joints are in the same spots, like the knees and the shoulders and the torso and the head. Obviously it's not perfect, this is just a quick demonstration, but you get the idea. Alright, now that that is done and we've got the proportions out of the way, I'm gonna give some tips on how to make just more interesting poses because although drawing in that sort of way is good for character reference sheets or something where it needs to be very basic, otherwise it's best to make the pose a little bit more interesting. Of course, this depends a lot on like the character's personality that you're drawing, but here is just some basic ideas.
For one is drawing the C curve and What the C curve is, is it's just adding a little bit more interest. It's making the body curve so it's not exactly a straight line. And it's good to draw the curve first so you just get an idea for, like, it's kind of like the line of action. You get an idea of, like, where everything else is going to go.
So it's the same shapes as the first set of drawings. It's just altered slightly to be a bit more interesting. You can already see this person just looks like they're more alive, like they look kind of confident, they're just standing up.
They're standing up straight, but it's more interesting than the ones that I did before. It just adds something, in my opinion, if you want to just make your drawing stand out a little bit more. You'll notice in my drawings, I often do poses kind of like this, if I'm drawing just someone standing, I usually add the C-curve a little bit. Next up, after the C curve is something called an S curve, which is just another pose example of something that you could try doing to make your pose a bit more interesting. I'm really going to speed this part up and I might touch more on how to do different poses in another video and just show a more complex like kind of way of drawing anatomy.
For now it's just really basic stuff, but I still wanted to include this in here just because I wanted to show you guys how to do it. it could make a huge difference in your art when you're drawing characters. Something to keep in mind when doing this though is just a little rule.
Make sure that the bottom of the chin, if you draw a straight line down to the ground, it goes in between the feet because if it doesn't land between that area, it's going to look really off balance as if the character is falling. So just to double check if you're really exaggerating a pose, make sure that the bottom of the chin is somewhere between the two feet because that way you know the character isn't going to fall down. Alright, last pose advice.
If you're doing a front view and you want to make it a bit more interesting and not just straight on, you can... Add angles to the shoulder line and the hips. So see how here I've drawn them just angled slightly in opposite directions?
I did exaggerate it a little bit, but it's just another way that you can make it look just something different. Also, it isn't all about the torso, it also depends on what your hands are doing. and your legs, usually the leg that has the most weight on it is going straight down and that would be the higher section of the hips and the other one is more loosely drawn I don't know, as I do these videos I'm sure I'll get better at describing things and explaining them because right now I haven't been doing the best job, I'm sorry, but practice makes perfect which is what you should also do when you're working on anatomy it's good to use references a lot and just keep practicing i believe in you okay and next i actually decided to bring in a reference photo just that i found like it's a free to use stock image if for while you're practicing it is a good idea to trace over some references just to get an idea of where the shapes go on a real body so it'll help you just understand it a little bit better. Personally, I don't think there's a huge problem with tracing over photography.
Like, if you're just trying to teach yourself and learning, maybe don't, never do this with someone else's artwork, because that is stealing. And if you want to play extra safe, make sure it's like a free-to-use image. Also, like if you're posting it somewhere you can share that what reference you used but it's it's a learning technique it helps you understand the body better by going over an actual body which I think is okay don't cancel me for that if you disagree that's okay too you don't have to trace over it like I am I'm just showing you to help you understand and just get comfortable with using your shapes. References are all Also really good to use, even if you're not tracing over it, just have it next to you while you're drawing it.
Because although it is good to use for a learning tool, you don't want to have to rely on always drawing over something, someone else's picture. It's one thing if you're doing a comic and you want to get a bunch of poses down really quickly and you want to take pictures of yourself doing those poses. But otherwise, it's best if you...
do learn how to draw it without like tracing. That's ideal, but just for when you're first starting out, if it makes you more comfortable, you could try doing that a few times to get the hang of drawing the shapes where they're supposed to go. Lastly, once you have a hang of the main shapes and you're into more cartoony styles, you can try altering them. Like once you know the basics. Like once you know the rules then you can start breaking them and drawing all kinds of funky characters.
Also, if you're... Also, although I like to use more rectangular shapes, you could also use round shapes too if you're making a rounder character. It might be more helpful and I know a lot of people use the bean method as something else you could try out if you're not a huge fan of the rectangles.
It does basically the same thing. And then at the end I just draw a person sitting using the same shapes. Now, I hope that you enjoyed this video. I know I have a lot to work on, but if I was able to help anyone at least a little bit, I would be super happy.
So let me know what you thought of it in the comments, and I will see you in the next tutorial, which should be out next week. Have an amazing day. Bye!