#i don't draw them as cylinder heads often but. when i do i have a lot of fun doing it

[cometshift]

based off my roblox avatar

[kiisaes]

How do you draw anatomy so well? Please tell me your secret🙏🏾

If you actually respond/pay attention to this---

Thank You!

thank u for thinking my anatomy is good! ;o;

my "secret": i've been drawing bodies since like 2nd grade, and more "seriously" since 7th grade. i've done a multitude of live drawing studies (drawing nude figures in various poses) which helps way more than you could imagine. i'm an art nut so eventually i improved through sheer work; my body saw how much i was drawing, aka repeatedly bashing my head in a wall, and was like "ok FINE u can get better at art i guess" LOL

anyway, i never know how to answer this question properly because different artists have different approaches to anatomy. the way i draw a body might not make any sense for anyone else, and vice versa.

i've seen youtube videos that are like "DON'T do this! DO this!" and because there's so many of them, they constantly contradict each other. it gets so damn overwhelming because there's no way you can follow all advice provided to you, much of which are from stuck-up artists who think their way is the only right way. there is no only right way to draw!!! please remember that!!!

that being said, here are my tips that might help you, because they happen to help me:

1—

separate the body into shapes! when sketching, i tend to draw my limbs with blob-like "cylinders"/ovals and joints with circles, like so:

these look like messy mannequin limbs, but they get the general vibe down for me. not to mention, they apply weight to body parts by implying muscle/fat. i used to draw with lines and circles, but this subconsciously made me draw arms and legs a lot skinnier and "bone thin" than i preferred. even though these are just sketchy base doodles, it makes it easier for you to build more detail on top of them!

2—

if you want personality in your pose, a great way to allude to that is by using a line of motion! for me, these usually manifest with the spine:

...but they can also apply to the rest of the body by extending past the pelvis. it's up to you! but a general spine/line of motion, even if just a scribble, can imply a different emotion and pose quite simply. i like to draw the torso and line then add arms and legs, sometimes based entirely on vibe LOL

3—

and honestly the BEST piece of anatomy advice i can give you... is to KEEP DRAWING!!! study figures over and over again, go to live figure drawing sessions (or use an online site, there's a handful of free ones), draw a pose you made yourself in the mirror, study the anatomy pros from art books or tutorials, watch shows or animations or hell, comics — actually PLEASE read comics, often times you'll find a cool pose just there for you to analyze and draw — you get the idea! even though i told you these tips, they won't actually mean anything unless you put in the work.

i know "just draw" is a very basic piece of advice that's kind of a duh point, but it sincerely works. i took a figure drawing class my 3rd semester of art school and it helped me leaps and bounds — all it did was have us draw figures over and over! you can get advice from a thousand different artists, but ultimately what matters is what works for YOU. and you won't know what works for you if you don't draw! i know it can get discouraging if you keep drawing and drawing and you're not getting the results you want, but art is a gradual process. i still continuously struggle with art but i'm really glad i improved leaps and bounds in the past couple years, bottom line, i feel more comfortable with drawing bodies, and it's all thanks to my hard work! (or perhaps my relentless fear of failure, which forces me to keep drawing so i don't fall behind lol)

i hope these helped even a little bit!!!!! just remember: anatomy takes a LONG time to figure out and perfect, and any kind of progress is valuable progress! there also isn't one correct way to draw bodies; just use what works for YOU to achieve what YOU want :)

[vesperstalksclones]

Drawing lesson #2 - full body

So for fun I decided to do another drawing tips & tricks thingy! I'm not an expert by any means, but I have been doodling forrrrr... at least 30 years now so.... *shrugs*

Ho-kay! So I'm drawing mr sexy pants Rex in Zygarrian armor because who doesn't love an angry cutie pie in a cat suit!

So BIG important - set some guide lines on your paper! Ugh! Don't draw and draw and draw and then suddenly you can't fit a foot on your paper ! 😭

Make dumb fat messy shapes to set up where your body parts are, and go over them multiple times. I find all those lines help to create the nice organic shapes I want!

So I have a messy outline going. I filled in that stick man type thing here and my important joints. Also I added some plains to help keep my body aligned

This is kind of a 3/4 angle. Not facing perfectly at me, so I don't have to be as fussy with the symmetry.

Now, let's talk about shapes. I often break body parts in to shapes while I am drawing. This helps keep the body parts the right size in relation to eachother; its easier to draw two triangles than to mock out two entire feet, right? These are my training wheels!

So take a look here! See how I turn the basic areas in to easy shapes? This way I can make sure my body is nice and proportional before I put lots of effort in to details.

This is also hugely helpful with hands and feet! So see how the foot on our left side is viewed from dead on? From the angle to the bottom it is kind of one big cone/triangle from this angle, or even maybe like the look of a horse's hoof!

Look to the one on the right - I used a triangle for the heel, a squatty rectangle for the toe and a sloping rectangle for the mid foot. I almost prefer to err on the side of bigger and chunkier with feet. What can I say... I like boots!

Also, look at the leg on our left. See how I outlined the leg? The natural curves of the thighs and calves should be "B" shaped at this angle.

Ok, so I want to make sure my arms are proportional! If you straighten out and put your arms at your sides you'll find your palms reach your thighs well below your hips! Like, Rex needs to be able to cover his nethers if need be!

So to draw my arms, first I pick where my hand is going to be, and my shoulder first. THEN I draw the forearm, elbow and upper arm to connect my hand to the body. To check my proportions, I grab my ruler and measure the rough length of my arm pieces, and then make sure a straight arm would reach his thigh. It looks pretty good to me!

What? More shapes? YES! So I like a thic chest on my man, but this really works for even skinny bodies. The top of my pectoral rectangle also acts as my collar bone, which connects the shoulders. Then the tops of the trapezius/shoulder muscles make a triangle pointing to the head. The rounded portion of the shoulder is two petals.

Now, the torso/sternum part is a fatty triangle pointing down from the pectoral. This also forms your rib cage. The tip of the triangle pushes down in to a cylinder shaped waist/abdomen. On a male body type this is generally not as curvey.

And the pelvis/hips... shaped like shorts 😋

Dude.... hands are hard!!! For EVERYONE. Anyone who says otherwise is BS-ing you. The painful truth is practice, practice, practice. Copy pictures from magazines. Sit and look at your own hands. Make the shape you are trying to draw and examine yourself!

Thank goodness for my cheater shapes! If you look at your mitts, you'll see that the knuckles line up fairly well, so laying down a guideline can help to lay them out. The palm section is a pretty comfortable rectangle, and where palm becomes wrist -> triangle.

Also, check out the fist on our right. IDK why, but I like making a triangular gap between my fingers. I feel like it adds depth in a way and it makes them feel less like sausages that way.

Alright! I've been working my way around my drawing. I like to jump around from part to part to keep everything moving along together. Work together the lines that you laid out with your shapes. I start out light, but when I've found the shape I like, I lay down a thick dark line that says "this is done. As much as I'm tempted to be lazy, I know I'll be unhappy if I don't keep working at all the little details. A simple curved line makes a wrinkle in the fabric. Add seams to your clothes and textures to cloth or metal.

For shading, sometimes a softer graphite pencil is nice, but it can get really smudgey! Some folks have these paper blenders - they make me gag. Its a texture thing. I prefer to blend with my fingers; the oils seem to help soften the pencil and seal it to the paper. Just a light scribbling motion with the pad if my finger usually works.

There he is babies!! I could lecture more, but I can only put this many pics in to a post!! So here I have my finished Zygerrian Rex. He has no patience for d-bag slavers and is going to open up a world of hurt on sumbody. I rrreeeeaaally wanted an angry toothy snarl a la Frank Miller's Spartans... bit I couldn't make it happen and look good. *Shrug*

Well, dollies... lwt me know what you think! Feel free to ask questions any time!

[olibheare]

HANDS!!!! teach me your ways. if you don't mind that is :D

I love to draw hands and by proxy I love to talk about drawing hands so I hope this is helpful in the most straightforward way.

Draw the fingernails 

Look at hands drawn by animators and Mangakas. (or, if you want a to-do list, Read Naruto and watch Aristocats) 

People that have to draft hands a bajillion times often know smart ways to secondhand them and move them in space to better aid in a pose or gesture. One of the most famous “hand guys” I can think of off the top of my head is the Disney animator Milt Kahl. No doubt you’ve seen people trace over his hands on Pinterest

(These are from The Sword in the Stone)

All of those fingernails help turn the form of a finger, which is nice because without them it’s just a cylinder without direction. When I started animating my freshman year I found a few pages of these and literally just sighted them into my sketchbook for like 2 days. Sometimes even tracing directly overtop. I have a big folder of screenshots for hands I’ve liked in comics while I read them. They’re often used for references. 

The thing about hands is they’re hard until you figure out that there are only like 5 positions you need to know. I’m both an animator and a webcomic artist so I have to draw hundreds of iterations of hands for each given project, and just like...front facing fist, side fist, pointing toward me... you start to recognize them.  I mention naruto only because its hands are extremely prevalent (I mean....the jutsu’s use specific hands). Any good mangaka draftsman you like will do. Like as much as I dislike Horikoshi...if you read My Hero Aca... guy knows how to draw a hand.