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Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Basic Body Proportions
In this human body drawing tutorial, you'll learn basic human body outline drawing techniques. If you’ve practiced capturing energy in the previous tutorial, you’ll have acquired a good feel for loose sketching of people. We’re going to start giving structure to that feeling-based groundwork by studying the body with a more scientific eye.
Let me say that it will take many sessions to cover the wonders of the human body. Not only is it among the most sophisticated animal structures in nature, it is also one of those with the most variations: few other species come in so many shapes and colors. Nobody, therefore, should feel frustrated for having trouble drawing people; it is an ambitious undertaking.
We’re going to build up this skill from the ground up, in the same order as the drawing process, starting with a simplified body drawing skeleton (the basic figure or stick figure), moving on to the volumes of muscle structure, and then finally the details of each part of the body and face.
The first fundamental skills to acquire are human proportions drawing techniques. And we’re going to be practicing with this basic figure for a while to become familiar not only with the conventional "ideal proportions", but also with the way they vary with gender, age, and even ethnic background.
If you're drawing digitally, perhaps you want your work to look as if it's created with pencil and paper. If this is the case, may we recommend one of the many Photoshop brush sets available on GraphicRiver , including this Classic Art Brush Pack.
The Pelvis
Add the pelvic bone next, simplified as a flattened circle between marks 3 and 4, with the hip joints sitting on 4. Its width is roughly 1.5 to 2 head-widths. You can now draw the spine connecting the head to this most important part of the body, its center of gravity and stability.
The Legs and Knees
Let’s assume this figure is standing with the feet vertically aligned with the hip joints. The knee joints sit on mark 6, as that line corresponds to the bottom of the kneecaps.
When the leg is stretched out, the knee joint is placed on a straight line with the hip and ankle (left). But this straight line is virtual: to complete the leg, connect the hip joint to
the inside of the kneecap, and then again, the outside of the knee to the inside of the ankle (right). This is a very simplified but accurate representation of the actual bone structure, and it helps in drawing the natural look of the human leg, which tapers in from the hip, then staggers out at the knee, and tapers in again. It also helps with placing the muscles at a later stage.
The Ribcage, Nipples, and Belly Button
The ribcage-lungs group is the third important volume of the body, after the head and the pelvis. Simplified, it is an oval that starts halfway between 1 and 2, down to mark 3; but it is best to chop off the lower part of it as shown here to imitate the actual rib cage, as the empty part between the two volumes is important: it is soft and subject to change (flat belly, soft belly, wasp waist) and it is also where the most torsion and movement happens in the spine. It’s good to be aware of that and not to attach the torso and pelvis together like two blocks, as that would "block" your drawing’s range of motion. The width of the oval is roughly the same as the pelvis for now.
This brief digression into non-skeletal details is to ensure there's no confusion between the actual position of the shoulder line and its apparent placement in a fleshed-out body, some examples of which are shown below.
The Arm, Wrists, and Hands
Finally, the arms. The wrists are on mark 4, slightly below the hip joints, which sit on it (you can test it out for yourself by standing up and pressing your wrists against your hips). The fingers end roughly at mid-thigh, which is mark 5. The elbows are a slightly complicated joint that we’ll examine in detail later, but for now it’s helpful to mark them as elongated ovals sitting on level 3.
We’re done... almost. Before summing this up, let’s extend those marks into lines and see how this works in profile.
How to Draw a Body: The Basic Profile
The next step in learning how to draw a body is the profile. Start by drawing the head again, the same egg shape but with the end pointing diagonally down, and drop a vertical line from the crown to the ground.
In an erect posture, you can place the pelvic bone (a narrower version of the head’s egg), the shoulder, and the knee roughly on this vertical line. They are on the same level as before: all the joints are, but the others are not on the same plane as these.
The Ribcage and Legs in Profile
The ribcage is closely attached to the spine, and, in a reasonably fit body standing erect, the chest is naturally pushed forward.
The hip joint is ahead of our vertical axis, and this is counterbalanced by the ankle being a bit behind it. So our hip-knee-ankle line is slanted backward, and staggered again: from the hip joint to the front of the knee joint, and from the back of the knee joint to the ankle.
The overall effect of this posture is a visual arc from head to chest to feet (in green), and when it’s flattened or reversed, we perceive an uncertainty or slouch in the posture.
