BEGINNERS GUIDE TO DRAWING BODIES (Realistic and Cartoon)

the one you see here is the easiest way to draw  cartoon bodies wait wait wait wait let's start together from the beginning get a pencil a sheet  of paper and a reference of the person you want to draw or get a drawing tablet if you have one if  you don't have a reference and you're looking for one... the reference can be found in its natural  habitat Pinterest this is where the reference likes to hang out and confuse its favorite  prey the artist with an infinite amount of cool pictures otherwi

se you can also download the  PDF Linked In the description in this PDF I added a lot of references that you can use to practice  if you know any other places where you can get full body references let your fellow artists  know in the comments unfortunately I cannot suggest places like Dev****art or YouTube will strike  me for nudity so you did not hear that from me absolutely not I'm going to jail so the first step  is to study your chosen reference we'll do that by drawing a stick figure draw

an oval to represent  the head then on each body node draw a dot lastly connect them all yummy such Masterpiece much art then on  your reference draw a line that connects the major points in your body pose which are the head the  center of the shoulders the center of the hips and the middle of the feet if your character is  standing on just one foot then connect it to that foot this line will help you show the flow of the  pose you're drawing here you can see it better in poses that are not stat

ic this is a disclaimer I  am drawing on a tablet because that is the easiest way for me to record a video but you can study a  reference on your phone using your finger to draw for example or you can draw on a printed picture  or you can draw with your mouse on a PC or you can draw on a magazine or you can even do this  exercise mentally if you prefer really whatever works best for you if you're in a budget and you  don't want to use a finger on your phone there are touch screens pens that work

on every touchcreen  like this one and they are quite cheap so to all the lovely beings out there ready to call me names  because I'm using a tablet instead of drawing on paper here now you can save your keyboard from  rage typing you're welcome now we can move on and copy the nodes on the reference on paper measure  the distance between the nodes with your pencil like this then copy the same distance on paper if  you're drawing traditionally you have two ways to draw the guidelines the first o

ne is to use a 2H pencil with a very light touch the second one is to use a red lead to draw the final lines  you can use a B or a 2B lead pencil now it's time to finally start studying the geometrical  shapes I love this part it's so much fun wee we've already simplified the head with an oval the  upper chest can become a trapezoid meanwhile the bottom part of the torso changes between men  and women as you can see here women tend to have trapezoid hips while men tend to have rectangular  ones

this obviously changes with different body types amount of muscles and body fat the limbs  are the most complicated part as they have a lot of details and nuances let's try to simplify  them as much as possible the upper part of the leg can be simplified with a trapezoid as well  the rotula is a circle while the bottom part of the leg is the sum of two triangles attached by  the long side it's important to note that the vertices of these two triangles are not aligned  the one on the outside part

of the leg is a bit higher than the opposite one the foot is simple  that is just a triangle last are the arms attach two circles at the shoulders to show the joints  the first part of the arm can become a rectangle and the bottom part a triangle connect them by a  circle placed on the arm joint now transfer these construction lights onto your drawing when you're  just starting out don't worry about having a clean final result without visible construction lines  your goal at this point is to st

udy the human body and understand how it works to practice  I recommend repeating the construction lines of the same pose like five to 10 times trying  to understand what is working and what you can improve instead the last step is to clean up your  lines and draw the final pose if you're drawing with a 2H pencil gently erase the construction  lines and leave them slightly visible then you can draw on top of them with a 2B pencil so they  won't be visible anymore in the final artwork If instead

you're using a red lead you can just draw  on top of it with a B or a 2B pencil lastly if you're drawing digitally lower the opacity of the  layer with a construction lines and then create a new layer and draw the final lines on it while  drawing the final lines keep looking at your reference for example here I'm studying the shape  of the shoulder and the arm on the reference and then I will reproduce it on my drawing here is  the triangle of the forearm in the reference the outline of the arm

follows these curves use the  construction lines as a way to study each part of the body outline separately this will help you  simplify complex shapes into manageable ones this is a great way to start practicing then with  time and practice you'll just need the body nodes and a flow line as guidelines now that you  know how to draw a realistic body we can talk about proportion and how to transform it into a  cartoon body on the average human body the height of the body is eight times the head t

his is true  for adults in realistic drawings but what if you want to draw cartoons and stylized drawings?  In that case, the head fits the body way less times for example let's keep the head the original  size and then shorten all the other parts of the body proportionally you can do this by dividing  all the measurements of the body in half that's what I did here and now the head of the character  fits four times into the body this is the easiest way to draw a stylized version of a person if 

you want to make your drawing look more cartoon then you can scale specific body parts to create  different results for example a popular way to draw cartoons is by drawing characters with a big  head big shoes and a smaller body the character I'm drawing here is inspired to Bratz in this  case their torso is way shorter than the average human and their legs are longer other cartoon  Styles exaggerate the body proportions to the extreme this is the case for example of Dexter's Lab here Dee Dee's

body follows the same principle to Bratz while Dexter's body is wider and his legs  are extremely short do children nowadays even know who these are? I grew up with this cartoon on  Cartoon Network I'm old here you can see all the three drawings next to one another see how  they change in the first two we kept the same head dimension but changed the body proportions  while in the last one we started changing every proportion if you're a beginner and you're not  getting the results you'd like do

n't worry this is perfectly normal improving at Art takes a lot  of time and practice and we have all been there at some point I can confirm if you want to learn more  and you want to learn how to draw anyone as a recognizable cartoon you can check this video  right here and you can check my workbook on how to stylize anyone down in the description box  thank you for watching my video Ciao Ciao Ragazzi! Subscribe!