How To Draw People Step-By-Step (part 1) (This article is brought to you by http://www.secretsoffiguredrawing.com)
In this article, you’re going to learn how to draw people step by step, starting with the human proportion. I think the ultimate goal that a lot of us figure drawing artist strive for is to one day be able to invent a pose from our own imagination and put it onto paper flawlessly. Well, in order to do that, we must first know the basic structure of the human body like the back of our hands. Many aspiring artists rush to drawing the human form without first mastering this crucial step, and thus slow down their progress significantly. Don’t be one of them! With that in mind, I’ve put together this 2-part tutorial that will PERMANENTLY imprint the basic structure of the human body into your head. My goal is that by the end of these tutorials, you’ll know how to draw the human frame better than you can recite your ABC! OK, let’s get to it! Now, the key to everything that we’re about to do lies in an idea that I called, “Mastery Through Invention“. This is a revolutionary idea that was first introduced to me by the very talented artist and teacher, Riven Phoenix. The basic concept of “Mastery Through Invention” is this: When you INVENT something from scratch using your own imagination, you instantly comes its MASTER and that invention will be permanently embed into your brain. And you’ll never forget or have any problem recreating it. Here, let me prove this to you. Take out a piece of paper and draw something. Maybe a simple shape like the one below but come up with your own.
Alrite, now crumble that paper up and throw it away. Make sure you can’t see what you just drew. Good. Now take out a blank piece of paper and draw that EXACT same shape again. I’ll wait… All done? Were you blown away by your newly discovered photographic memory? Cool, huh? You just experienced “Mastery Through Invention” first hand. Because you were the creator of that object, you knew everything there was to know about it. And so re-creating it was a piece of cake. “That’s great, Ethan. But what does this have to do with figure drawing and how to draw people step by step?” Great question! See, the reason so many artists struggle with remembering what the human body is suppose to look like is because they perceive that knowledge to be OUTSIDE of themselves. They were never the CREATOR of the human form, and so they never truly UNDERSTAND that knowledge. The solution? Simple. All we have to do is ERASE what we know about the human form. Huh?! That’s right. Forget that there’s even such a thing as a human body. Then, from that blank canvas, we will re-build the human body from scratch, making up our own rules about how it should appear. And by doing so, we will own that knowledge forever! (MUHAHAHAHA….sorry)
Don’t worry, I’ll take you through this process step-by-step. We’re essentially going to perform a little “voodoo mind trick” on ourselves. I hope that doesn’t freak you out Wow, this article is getting mightily long. I swear, I started writing this tutorial with the full intention of going through this process with you today. But it appears that my rambling nature has gotten the better of me. So I’m going to cut this article short and wait till tomorrow’s tutorial to show you the cool exercises that I have in store so make sure you keep an eye out for that one. That’s also give you plenty of time to digest all this information. So, until next time, thank you so much for putting up with me and have a great day! In the next tutorial we will continue our discussion of how to draw people step by step. Also, to get tons more FREE tutorials on figure drawing and other types of drawing, just about figure visit my website at http://www.secretsoffiguredrawing.com