How to draw people

Drawing people takes a little more practice than drawing just about anything else. The reason is that people are long (high) relative to their width, so proportion becomes a tad more difficult.

Proportion is the toughest of all aspects of drawing and it’s easy for your eye (and mine!) to become fooled. When first starting out, there is a tendency to draw the head, then add the body, then the arms and legs. This is quite normal.

But to get your proportions drawn accurately and quickly you’ll need a technique that I call "The One Big Shape". That’s circling around all the points that encompass or contain the person on the drawing paper. This first step is faster and easier than trying to place a top, bottom, left and right markers and then trying to fit your drawing inside.

Circle quickly around the One Big Shape. Then circle around other “shapes” that seem easier and smaller to follow:
- Circle from waist to feet
- Circle from hand to head each
- Circle from hand to torso each

If you keep your pencil on the paper (and one finger touching the paper at all times) you’ll find that as you practice, your accuracy with proportions will grow with leaps and bounds.

A way of rapidly drawing people is to “volumize”. That is, after you get your One Big Shape completed, and your secondary shapes circled in, you can use spirals to create volume around portions of the body: the head, torso, arms and legs. Just start at the torso and draw ovals moving your hand down. That will build a fast visual of volume for you. Remember to keep your hand very light—it is keenly important to NOT commit your lines early. It is far better to use your eraser and remove those lines that you know aren’t right.

Last tip: Constantly move your eyes back and forth between subject and your paper and keep your drawing hand moving—that will force you move quickly—and therefore more accurately (more on this later).

Now I certainly can’t teach you all the aspects of how to draw people in one short (or even long) article, but if you truly want to learn how to draw people, check out how to draw people.

Paul Wagner
http://www.how-to-draw-online.com/