Start off by drawing a head. Theoretically, you could just draw the arm. But arms are hard to draw if you aren’t seeing them in proportion to the rest of the body and you might as well get more practice with figure drawing. So draw a circle.

Now, figure out proportions. We’re not going to draw out the entire body, but it helps to get the entire body down when drawing a picture if you have enough room. Bodies are typically seven and a half to 8 and a half heads long. If you are drawing a live model, you can then get the proportions right by using the head as a frame of reference. All you have to do is simply stretch your arm out and close your non-dominant eye, which is the eye in which objects move when you close your other eye.

Once I have the heads all drawn out, I find it easy to create markers at different places on the body in order to know where I’m at. For instance, I know that the breastbone is slightly above the third circle. So draw the whole body out. I didn’t try to draw a perfect body because I want to focus more on the arms, the whole point of this blog post.

When hung straight, the arms usually stretch far enough that the hands are level with the point at which the legs spread apart. You might want to draw these first since then you’ll know where to go with your arms. For this tutorial, do not worry too much about the hands, since we’re not focusing on hand art.

Next, draw the circles where the elbows are supposed to be at. These circles are slightly above the point where the torso and hips meet.

The rest of the arms you can draw in any order. For the outer part of the arms connected to the shoulders, draw the lines with a slight curve. With the human body, everything has a curve in it. So be sure to always include that.

Next, draw the armpits. Why? Because the armpits will connect to the inner part of the arms. Armpits are really simple curving lines that aren’t even noticeable when the arms are close to the body. However, if the arms are raised above the head, the armpits will change greatly. However, this will be covered in a different tutorial.

The elbows, when the arms are straight, have slight curves inwards.

I think the way the arm is drawn works for most drawings. But you might want to get even more realistic with the form of the arm. I decided to redraw the left arm and focus on that solely. The left arm is turned with the top part of the forearm facing outwards. What this is going to create is an arm that has the inner part bulging while the outer part is somewhat flat.

If the arm is twisted in the right way, the outer part will have the bump where the elbow is found visible. From the elbow to the deltoids, there’s a curving line like that shown in the picture that almost goes within the arm, thus the line drawn inside the arm.

For the inner part, there will be more of a bulge if the arm is twisted with the bicep facing the person’s side. The deltoid overlaps the bicep in a way, so more muscular characters with a low body fat index might have a slight fold in the inner arm as well as the outer arm.

Some people find arms easy to draw while others find it wildly hard (like me). One tip for drawing the arm also fits for drawing really anything else. If you get to a part where you’re having trouble drawing, just draw it really slowly. Take your sweet time and focus fully on what the arm should look like.

Another tip for drawing arms is to simplify. This is an especially good idea whenever you draw cartoons. In fact, with cartoon art, there is no limit to how simplified your line drawing can be. Keep the arm as simplified as possible until you have the arm that you’re looking for. Then, you can start adding details and making the arm as you see fit. Just remember that arms are never straight and always have at least some minor curves.

Once you start drawing arms frequently, you will start to notice that arms really only are made of circles. You can really draw an arm in any position as long as you visualize the circles in the arm.

Drawing arms straight isn’t too tough, but what really gets tricky is when you try to draw arms in different positions. That asks for a whole different tutorial for a different day. For now, just practice getting the proportions right and finding the muscles that are found inside the arms.

Hmm, the arms are out of proportion. Make sure that the upper and lower arm are of equal length. Also, make sure that the fingers touch the mid thigh (as quoted by the lovely Marisol! Hi Alex! I took over your post! I’m posting about arms too in a little while).

Alex

I’m not even sure who this character will be but she’s temporarily named Angora. I might not even use her since I don’t hold on to characters unless they feel right. Maybe she needs some redesigning.

My story takes place in a setting inspired by pre-history Philippines. I’d draw her wearing the clothes that people wore during that time frame, but they mostly wore nothing. That reminds me of a museum exhibit I saw of Native Americans. Some of the figurines of the Native Americans were completely nude. That was so weird since I was shielded from all nudity as a kid and then I’m exposed to a culture that sometimes runs around naked. I guess I learned from that how values can be way different from culture to culture.

You might think “hey, she doesn’t look Filipino.” Well, actually she’s Negrito. From the research I did, Negritos settled in the Phillippines before the Austronesians, an indigenous group from what is now called Taiwan.

That is the initial sketch I started off with. I like that sketch and might use it for a different drawing. How did she change so much? A whole bunch of reasons. The main reason was that I wanted to practice foreshortening, which is something I need to learn how to do with the body. Well, I didn’t really succeed at foreshortening her because that is tough!

What’s foreshortening? Foreshortening is how objects seem deformed at different angles. I guess I made her arms somewhat foreshortened, but their sizes are roughly the same and not large enough to show a real contrast.

So now what? I drew new torso lines in order to make her body appear turned to the side. I also foreshortened her shoulders, making one appear larger and one smaller to indicate that one shoulder is turned farther away from the point-of-view.

Next, I made her sides more shapely and raised her chest. Now she doesn’t look like she has the body of a 90000 year old woman. (I meant to say 900, not 90000).

At this point, I decided to redraw her clothes. Why? She looked like she was wearing a kimono or tunic, which doesn’t really fit with her character. But nudity doesn’t work for me, so I made up some clothes. I also redrew her arms. I liked how they looked, but they look way too long right now. I think this is where I was getting tired two nights ago because her proportions are extremely out of whack. I started drawing her legs because I wanted to shorten her dress. With dresses, its really important that you draw all of the legs out in order to make sure that you have the proportions right.

I did a little resizing and drew out the basic shape of the head.

Then I drew her face. I was aiming for a face that was both delicate and Negrito, but I ran into a problem. Most cartoon and manga faces are European/Asian inspired. Rarely do you see other races represented. I really had nothing to go off. I wanted to emphasize this character’s ethnicity, but I also wanted to keep her features relatively simple. So I experimented with the nose and lips until I got the results that I wanted.

I also added hair, my favorite part.

Then I added lineart and widened her features. I don’t know why I did this and I think I’m going to change it back later.

As you can see now, I colored her. I don’t know if I gave this advice out yet or not, but setting your coloring layers on multiply allows you to color without coloring over dark lines. This is good if you have a hard time coloring within the lines.

Then I used a handy-dandy color scheme generator at: www.colorschemer.com/online.html

Just plug in the value for one of the colors you’re using and it’ll generate colors that are compatible. These colors should pop out more when put together.

So I drew her and showed her to Marisol and she drew all over her. She took her mouse and drew all these lines all over my drawing like it was nobody’s business (joking. I asked her to).

This is sort of like an artist’s version of proofreading. It really helps to have someone else look at your artwork before you finish it because they can see mistakes that you missed. Being an artist doesn’t have to be lonely.

I took her advice and adjusted her. But I gave her brown eyes instead of blue.

Like usual, I have to finish most of my tutorials in multiple blog posts. This isn’t because tutorials take that long, but because I have to write these in gaps of time between school and work. I wish I could write more tutorials, but time is always so short. Still, Marisol and I promise that we’ll always keep updating. We won’t be those people who stop posting out of the blue.

I love you all,

Alex

Hmm, we haven’t had an art tutorial in awhile…

I’ve been working on a picture of four women. They’re all walking towards the point-of-view, which of course means that the ones closer to the camera must be larger than the ones farther away. I want this to look as proportionate as possible, so pow! I whipped out the sliding dummy.

You might be thinking “argh! Sliding dummies? What are you talking about?”

The sliding dummy is a nice tool that removes some of the pain of giving a character the right size in proportion to other characters on the page and the point-of-view (which is basically the lens of the imaginary camera that photographs the picture). When characters are walking in different directions, the sliding dummy makes it easier for the artist to figure out where the heads and bodies are supposed to go. If you are first learning how to use this awesome technique, I recommend you first draw a scene that has a back wall. Maybe its just me, but I find everything easier to visualize when there’s a flat wall to place the imaginary dummy up against. I have a picture that I might as well make an indoor picture. You can start with a character or a background first when drawing, but I mostly prefer a character because that’s usually the most important part of the picture for me.

Picture still needs some work, but will be good enough for illustrative purposes

My goal is to get the characters more proportionate. The first step I took was to create the line that indicates the top corner of the room. This is also going to be the line that our sliding dummy will be slid on. Next, I used the farthest-away character to determine roughly how large the head for the dummy would be. I placed this dummy on the left side.

Next, I’m going to use the dummy to create the vanishing point. Oftentimes, you create the vanishing point first but since I already have a picture, I’m going to be working backwards. So I’m going to slide the dummy towards the center so that I can use it to pin point the vanishing point.

How do I slide over the dummy? One solution is to tear off a piece of paper and then draw the dummy on that paper. Tracing paper would work well for this since you can get the head to be the right size. If you’re using a graphics program with a layers feature, you can create the dummy on a different layer and use the selection and move tool to move the dummy wherever you want to. Just keep the top of the dummy’s head on the line. Then use a ruler or the line tool to draw two lines that intersect above the characters and travel past the dummy’s head with each line touching the side of the head.

Now you have the vanishing point, which is essential when using the sliding dummy to determine how large each character is supposed to be based on where he or she is in the picture. The next part is the difficult part. Imagine a line shooting from the vanishing point to one of the character’s heads. Wherever this line intersects with the horizontal line, place the dummy’s head. Then, with your pencil or stylus, start from the vanishing point and draw a straight line towards one of the edges of the dummy’s head. When you reach this point, do not stop but instead keep drawing the straight line. A ruler is essential with this process. Next, draw a second line from the vanishing point to the other side of the head.

Following this step, you must then resize the head of the character so that the head is touching both lines. You do not have to count the hair, but the edges of the head should come close to touching the lines.

In order to resize these heads, you might need to redraw them to an extent. That’s why it’s easier to set up the vanishing point and sliding dummy before drawing the picture. But its very possible that you might someday have to work backwards like I am.

So that’s the final result. I think it looks more natural. I can’t wait to continue this picture and get it to look a little better, but I have almost no experience drawing backgrounds. I think Tala does.

I have no clue what I’m doing next, but that’s the fun part of this all. Maybe next time I’ll finish soon enough that I won’t feel like saying goodnight. That’ll be kinda weird for people reading this in the morning.

Please email sketching tutorial suggestions to sketchinghouse@gmail.com

Please, please, please…

Alex

]]> http://sketchinghouse.com/archives/599/feed 1 http://sketchinghouse.com/archives/16 http://sketchinghouse.com/archives/16#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:25:04 +0000 Alex http://sketchinghouse.com/2008.11.16_arch.html#1226812676237 New artists sometimes panic over proportions. I remember when I first tried drawing at age 7, all my character’s hands were bigger than their heads. Later on in life, I struggled to draw legs that looked right. My legs looked enormous while my bodies looked like oompa-loompa bodies.

Well, it turns out that I wasn’t completely off base if I were a Japanese cartoon artist. Really short, stubby arms and legs are the style found in chibi-style drawing. Really long legs are common in Shoujo manga, while really big heads are given to characters in order to increase their comicalness.

You might be thinking, “what the fudge?” These characters are all deformed. They don’t look like real people at all.

Okay… maybe you’re not really thinking that. You probably already know that art, especially cartoon art, can bend the rules as easily as Neo can stop bullets in mid-air. Abstract artists put ears where the noses are and put toes where the ears are supposed to be. Newspaper comics often are drawn with very little attention placed on realism. Many artists really do not care if their drawings look like photographs that have had the pencil sketch filter run on them. This is especially true for manga, which tries to stylize real life, rather than duplicate real life.

I created a gridline to show how four different figures can have much different proportions. I created each of these figures based off trends that I see in cartooning. I noticed that the two biggest differences in the proportions of the body seem to be found in the head and the legs. I broke down the drawing of each figure into sections in order to show how each figure is drawn (of course, not all figures are drawn from the head to the feet, but this is for illustrative purposes).

Above is a bunch of floating heads. No, they’re not victims of Sephiroth. Notice how they still have shoulders attached to them. The first head (the one farthest to the left) is drawn with the realistic style in mind. All the other characters are deviations from the realistic style. All of these characters are meant to have the exact same height in order to emphasize the difference in proportion. The second head is drawn slightly smaller than the first head in order to make more room for the body about to be drawn. The second head is larger, filling in the top section of the grid. The last head is the most comic head. The head’s so big that it doesn’t even fit in the first section of the grid.

Next, I added most of the torso for each body. The normal figure’s torso is the largest. The other figures seem to give more space to the head and limbs. Perhaps this is because the head and limbs are the most animated parts of a character. There isn’t much a character can say with his chest unless he’s standing in front of a mirror making his muscular chest dance (I’m not sure what that says and I’m not sure if I want to know). The second character has the smallest body, since the majority of the space is going to be taken up by the incredibly long legs. I gave the third character a decently sized body. The fourth character has a childlike body. If you want to give a character a really childlike body, make the shoulders more rounded and thicken the body. This will give the character the short stature of a child. Big heads also show that the character hasn’t grown into her head yet.

Next, I drew the lower half of the body. For most of the characters, I completed the arms at this level. Real-life hands, when held at the sides, extend slightly past the hip. This rule is not followed at all with the second and fourth characters. The really long arms that the second character has are meant to match her enormous legs. The fourth character only has arms that are slightly longer than they’re supposed to be. As for the lower half, I’m not always too great at drawing a lower half when I’m drawing the figure, so any patterns you might notice are all in your head :p .

For all of the figures, the next portion was almost entirely devoted to the legs. I tried to make the realistic character’s legs look the most realistic by giving them more of a round shape. The last figure, on the other hand, will have really simplistic legs. As you can see by now, the second character’s legs are going to be really long. Why is that? I’m not too sure. I know that Shoujo usually has characters with really long legs, but I can’t figure out why? If anyone has any idea, please email me.

In the final section, I added the legs. Again, I added a realistic roundness to the first figure. His body looks kinda solid, like he’d be a great martial artist. The second figure has really long arms and legs (I told you they would). The arms look ropey and the legs dominate more than 50% of the space. This character would definitely make fantastic basketball player. The third figure had a bigger head, with slightly longer legs. This character could pass as a run-of-the-mill anime character, except she still looks realistic enough to look attractive. The fourth figure has a head that dominates the character’s body. This character will rather be a egg-headed Ivy League type or a really cute mascot. Most likely the latter.

What do we get from all this? I think we’ve already figured out that an artist can draw whatever the heck he or she wants, but it’s probably also a good idea to keep the style of your character consistent. When you use a certain style, most viewers will get a general idea of what you’re trying to express when designing your character in a certain way. Most viewers will notice that you’re trying to draw a hard-edged realistic type or the emotional and eternally adorable mascot. Why confuse them by adding a huge head and extremely long, yet realistically defined arms. Unless you’re trying to draw Stretch Armstrong’s head exploding in space, why weird out your viewer with contradictory elements.

Then again, maybe you should prove me wrong. Some of the most successful innovators in this world were told that their idea would never work. If you could really visualize something great and fresh that mixes different styles, go for it. That’s where these styles came from in the first place. New ideas don’t come from artists following the same old tired conventions, but rather by experimenting and coming up with new conventions.

Happy drawing

Alex.