[Tutorial] Character Drawing

[Edge]

#1. Face

As a prerequisite to this tutorial, you need an art program that supports layers, several sheets of paper and a lightbox, or tracing paper. This tutorial is meant to be agnostic to whatever method you are using, so you shall have to determine how to go about accomplishing layering.

The goal of the tutorials will be to teach a method to draw consistent images. Drawing by these methods will also allow you to draw faster. And by changing the proportions to whatever looks best to you, will allow you to develop your own style and, again, keep it consistent from drawing to drawing. It will also allow you to arbitrarily draw your characters from any angle.

To start off, one of the simplest things to draw is a face from the side. Drawing side views is actually the easiest, since you don't need to worry about symmetry. And the face is easy since it can be formed from a basic circle.

So first, create a new layer to draw on, and choose a color that is relatively light to draw with. Then draw a circle. It's not very important that it's perfectly round. And it doesn't need to be very clean.



Draw a horizontal line across the middle of the circle, but slightly below the center. As a general rule, the lower you draw this line, the younger the resulting character will appear.

Now, from one side where the horizontal line means the circle, draw a line straight down until it goes past the bottom of the circle a ways.

Then, from the middle of the circle, draw a line extending down and curving to the end of your last line. You should start curving it about as you exit the circle.

Your picture should look something like this:



Now, you draw a horizontal line midway down the front of the "face". This is where the base of the nose will end up. It is also where the bottom of the ear is.

Next draw a second horizontal line halfway between the last line and the end of the chin. This is where the base of the bottom lip should end up.

Create an eyebrow ridge just above the first horizontal line:



Now draw in the curvy bits:



And more curvy parts:



The top of the base of the ear starts from the same height as the center of the eye. And the hairline has an bump at the temple, towards the eyebrow.

In reality, rather than using a perfect circle, as we did at the begining, a slightly longer than taller shape is more realistic, but this is something to experiment with. The top of the head, for a more realistic character, should only be about 1/3rd to 1/2 the height of the brow over the hairline.

Our next step is to create a new layer to draw on.

On the new layer, we trace the rough drawing, trying to make some fixes as we do so, and adding some detail:



Having used a lighter color to draw with earlier, you don't have to worry about getting confused about which layer you're drawing on. And since we are drawing on a new layer, we can erase and correct lines without destroying the rough (sometimes you want to refer back to it, add more, or restart from it.)

Now we create another new layer and, again, with a light color draw hair:



There's not very many hints to give on drawing hair. You'll just have to practice, I guess. Realistic characters have their hair raise somewhere from a half a centimeter to a few centimeters off of the scalp. Anime characters generally have at least three to five centimeters.

And on a new layer we trace in some better lines, and make some corrections.



If we were going to color in the picture, usually we would want to leave the hair and the body lines on separate layers. But we won't be handling coloring yet. So we'll erase the scalp and any other places hidden by hair. We'll also get rid of the two rough layers. (You're best to just turn the rough layers to "not-shown", rather than deleting them.)

That gets us to this picture:



Now something to realise, is that as you work on a picture, your brain adjusts to see it as you mean it to be. So the way it looks to you, almost definitely doesn't look like how it will look to others.

Thus we flip the picture horizontally, and change the brightness of the layer so that it's grey instead of black (or just not use black lines on the previous steps....)



Probably, several things will immediately pop out at you as looking wrong. Yes, those really are all wrong. Record them in your brain now, very quickly, trying to figure out what is wrong about them.

Create a new layer, trace, making all the fixes that you noticed that needed to be made.

Repeat as much as needed. Flip horizontally. Flip vertically. Rotate 90 degrees. Etc. Make sure the picture looks correct from every angle. Create new layers, and fix errors.

As you get better, you will need to create fewer layers. But in general, you are safest to trace and fix, than you are to erase and redraw until you are satisfied that you know better.

And we end up with a picture like this:



Not the best picture ever.

But frankly, no picture which perfectly follows "the method" will end up looking very natural. They'll tend to look slightly flat and the characters will look tense. The picture also doesn't include any perspective, which is most of what is making it look flat.

As you get better, though, "the method" becomes a more fluid process and more liberties are taken. But being able to do it when needed, is what saves you when something isn't coming naturally, or if you want to try something that's beyond what you're capable of. And if you can draw a face with all the proportions right, then you can spend more time focussing on drawing hair without having to worry about the basic stuff.

[Edge]

#2. Full Character

This time, we will draw a full character from the side. As pointed out in the previous tutorial, the side view is the easiest to draw as you don't need to worry about symmetry. But it still let's you learn the relative proportions: How long the legs are, how long the arms are, etc.

Once you can draw a character standing straight up, you only have to rotate the various "pieces" in order to achieve any position you want. For the moment, all of these pieces are 2D shapes, but in the future we'll look at these pieces as 3D shapes so that you can do the same thing and rotate any part, to achieve any position. The goal is to be able to draw like you are looking at a doll, but where the doll exists only in your head.

Now, to get the proportions right, you first need some sort of structure. Since this will be a standing character, a vertical rule will help us the most. And, also to get the correct proportions, we need to decide how many "heads" in height the character should be. In general, the more "heads" tall that the character is, the older they will appear.

3 heads would be about the age of a baby
5 heads would be 10 or 11 years old
7 heads is an adult
Anything more is "idealised"

Personally, I like to use 6.5 heads in height when drawing women, and 7 for men. Try things and see what you like. And similarly, look at pictures; measure the height of the head and how many head-lengths tall the character or person is. Chibis won't match the above list obviously.



Depending on how anal you are, you can use a ruler, just eyeball it, or use the thumb method. In the above picture I just eyeballed it, obviously. But before we go any further, you should learn "The Thumb Method".

Take a pen, pencil, or stylus and hold it up at arms length (or against the paper, screen, etc.), perpendicular to your eyeball. Now position the tip at one end of something you want to measure, and move your thumb so that the meeting point of your thumb and the stylus are at the other end of the thing you're measuring. Now you have a "recording" of how long that thing is. By moving your hand to cover other areas of the canvas, you can verify that everything is the same length which should be the same length. You can also use this method to see how many head-lengths in height a character is.

Draw a head between the top two lines, just as we did in the last tutorial:



That should be on it's own layer.

Now we prepare for drawing a character in, so we give ourself a bit of a guide:



The human body is not straight. Your neck juts forward off of your shoulders, not straight up. From your shoulders down to your knees, your body is in a long arch. And from your knees to your feet, the arch curves back to pointing forward a little. Your buttocks and other muscles hides this, but if you try drawing the same picture with a straight line, rather than a curved one like above, you'll see how unnatural it looks.

I've also added in a half-way marker, labelled "hiney". You should definitely use a ruler or the thumb method to make sure that this is actually half the height of the character. Drawing a line exactly half-way between two points is very difficult since humans subconsciously want to split things according to the golden ratio.

Now we draw in some blobs:



These are, specifically, the ribcage, hips, knees, and ankles. The ankles just get placed high up enough to allow room for the foot, and the knees halfway between the ankle and the bottom of the hips.

I was taught to draw these as a different shape from what I drew here. But personally, I think that having a shape similar to human bones is better for drawing than what I learned, which was more abstract.

Specifically, the ribcage grows larger as it goes down from the neck. Only at the very bottom, at the final ribs does it contract again. And the lowest point of the ribcage is towards the front, at a bit of a point. You might want to play around with different lengths for the ribcage.

The pelvis has two boney protrusions just above the front of your legs. So in my drawing, there's a slight point on the top-right where those bones are. And since these are the high point, the line going back to shape the buttocks, angles down slightly. The front (right) side of the hips is relatively flat, but rounds around to shape the crotch and buttocks in a relatively nice circle. You'll want to play around with how large you like to make the ass.

One thing to note, is the position of the hips in regards to the half-way point. In general, the higher the hips are in regards to that line (i.e. the longer the legs), the more "idealised" a human form you'll get. I've placed the hips a little high, but not extremely so. Placing it lower will tend to make the character look younger (i.e. shorter legs compared to the torso.)

Now we add on some more parts:



Some things to note:

I've carved some slots for the legs to go into in the hips. This will help us when we start doing this in 3D.

The belly sticks out a little just below the belly button, then goes down to merge with the hips. But others may draw that differently depending on their taste. You might want to play around with some different lines to see what you like.

The top circle of the calves don't encircle our "knee" joint. They're actually set back a little bit.

We'll now add on the shoulders and breasts:



The shoulders shoud be below the high point of the torso. They should also be towards the front of the body. I've put them just a tad further forward than necessary, but not by too much.

When drawing the breasts, you should consider them as being connected to the shoulders--or rather, suspended from them like bags (mm, yummy.) But beyond that I can't offer much help as drawing breasts is a rather stylistic/preference based thing.

ETA: Note that I also added in a bump for the knees.

And now, arms:



You might want to draw them on a new layer.

You'll want to draw them similarly as you did the legs, with elbow and wrist joint points. These shouldn't be in a straight line, but both the upper arm and lower do nicely encircle the joints. The upper part of both the upper arm and lower should be wider around than the lower parts.

For the moment we'll be ignoring hands, so feel free to just draw a blob.

And like the last tutorial, we trace in:



Flip and grey out:



Fix, fix, fix again. Add in detail. And voila:



Of course the "voila" part will take a bit more effort than "Voila", but at least we have a working point for the body.

[Edge]

#3. Eyes

I'm going to take a bit of a detour from character drawing this time.

The rest of this tutorial will teach you how to set up the "skeleton" of a character, but leaves drawing the details to you. So this time, I'll give some hints on how to draw the details.

What you need to do first is to sketch from real life. You are probably your best model (if you have a mirror), but try to get other people to sit still as well. (And of course you'll want to draw objects and landscapes to help with drawing backdrops.)

But the thing to keep in mind is this: The human brain stores information in abstract forms. For instance, if you see the characters =) on a page, you'll realise that this is a sideways-tilted happy face. And you're able to make that link because our brains abstracts a face down to two dark spots above a line.

What this means in a practical sense is that you have no idea what a face looks like. An odd thing to say, I realise, but to give an example, here is a typical drawing of an eye:



If you see a child's drawing of an eye, this is how it will almost always be drawn, in a perfect football shape. That football shape is the abstract symbol that your brain has stored. When you go to draw, if you don't have a point of reference, you'll end up drawing something similar to this even though a real human eye only generically takes this shape.

Here's a realistic eye (meh,...I can do better...):



Now I can draw an eye like this from memory because I've studied what eyes actually look like and have a realistic image of what an eye looks like in my head, rather than a symbol of an eye.

This is what you need to do.

The thing is, when you go to draw something that you are looking at, it's hard to separate what you are seeing from what your brain wants to draw (which is the abstract shapes that it has.) So you'll often end up with a set of these symbols mixed in a with a realistic drawing of what you're trying to sketch.

So the secret to sketching, is to not draw a picture. If you're looking at someone's face and think to yourself, "I'm going to draw their face", then you'll end up with a poor picture. What you need to do instead, is to view the world as a set of lines. When you see an eye, instead of thinking "eye", you'll just see it as a random assortment of lines and curves. Your job is simply to trace the lines you are seeing with the same lengths, angles, and curves. What those lines are is unimportant; you just need to preserve the basic information of length, angle, and amount of curvature. Don't let your brain add anything more to that.

Now a second warning when you are sketching real life, is that it is easy to get lost in the details. What this means is that quite often, different parts of the picture will end up larger or smaller in comparison to one another from what you are looking at. This happens because quite often you'll start drawing the picture at a certain point and then work out. Without any sort of framework on the page, it becomes difficult to preserve a specific scale.

Using the thumb method helps, but moreso, before drawing the details, you should spend a minute drawing some basic circles and boxes for where things should end up. With this framework in place, you'll afterwards be able to check that the part you are currently drawing lines up with the other parts in the sketch as it does in real life. Another tip is to switch around from place to place on the paper, instead of focussing on drawing one object/part at a time. This will help break your mind from covering flaws, and allowing you to keep things lined up with each other.

[King Shaun]

Oh my god, really nice mate, I see you have put alot of effort into this guide, and for a minute there, I thought you were drawing a naked woman!

Thanks for this mate, rep when I get out of this section..

[Nemorosa]

Very nice, +rep.

[Minimized]

Epic, here's some rep for you.

[CarlosJ]

nice tutorial, obviously have put alot of effort into it
+rep

[LordJedi]

damn how can u do it with computer nice dude

[LordJedi]

ohh is this with computer?

(sry about double post )

[CarlosJ]

yes LordJedi i think you could do this on the computer, although it would be very hard unless you are using a graphics tablet so thats the best way really if you want to use a computer