hEY AuroraFrostbite remember that one time I said I was gonna do a drawing tutoriel? wELL GUESS WHAT I FINALLY DID IT LIKE A KONTH LATER Cuz I think I said that in March.
Oof
Anyways, hopefully I do a good job explaining stuff, and it's easy to understand!
Also note that I dont draw stuff the exact same way every single time, both due to me being the "queen" of inconsistency™, and because I do different poses for characters or give them different body shapes or whatever.
And not to mention, my artstyle requires a lot of erasing and redrawing, which I had to do a lot in this.
So just keep in mind those things and that this is just a basic way of how I'd go about doing it.
Oh and one more thing is that I ended up with 30(31 when counting the final product of the sketch) pictures for this process, and from what I remember Watrpad only allows 20 images per chapter, sO I'll probably have to split this into two parts. Hopefully I'll be able to cut this chapter off at 15 images with the cut off being smooth, if that makes sense??
Anyways enough stalling I'm just gonna start!!!
//aHEM
Welcome to my art tutorial! Here I'll be showing you how I draw a female characters body!
Keep in mind that everyone does things differently, and it all depends on preference, as well as that I'm not a professional in anyway shape of form, and I'm working with 2½ years of """proper??""" experience, so I don't know everything. I just picked up on things along the way.
So, starting off with the tutorial, we have to draw the head!
Step 1.) The way I draw heads is by staring off with a circle:
It doesn't have to be a perfect circle, seeing as it's simply for getring the basically shape down. And if you want, you can clean up the circle by erasing the excess lines you dont want there, BUT I recommended not doing that til after you have the body down. Or at least the rest of the head.
Step 2.) Then, after you have the circle, you draw a cross/plus sign(??) along the middle/bottom of the circle, like so:
This is to establish the center of the face(vertical line) and where the eyes are going to go(horizontal line)
Once again the lines don't have to be perfectly straight, they just have to be straight enough for you to understand te purpose of them, if that makes any sense.
Step 3.) next you have to draw two slightly angles lines going inwards from the sides of the circle, going down to where the line ends:
Once you almost reach the end of the center line, slant the side lines in wards more so they both touch the end of the center line. Feel free to add more pencil to "carve" the lower half of the head to your liking. if the lines look even enough and don't look weird and lopsided to you, then you should be fine!
Always make sure to go back to differnet parts of the drawing to fix any mistskes you may find.
Step 4.) is the neck! While I draw really skinny necks, you don't have to if it looks werid to you! As I said before, it's all up to preference.
Luckily, necks are pretty simple. They're just two vertical lines parallel to each other starting from where the chin of the head is(in a frontal view anyways):
You can always fix/adjust the neck of head once you've at least drawn the upper torso.
and speaking which,
Step 5.) Is drawing the base of the upper torso, or where the shoulders are/start.
And to do that, simply draw a diagonal line going forward from both/each end of the neck, and then connect the end of those lines with a horizontal line going from one to the other:
The lines for the shoulders can go out farther then this if desired, i.e. if the character had broad shoulders or was a male, then you'd want to make the lines for them longer and more horizontal.
Make sure to redraw the shoulders of necessary.
Step 6.) Onto the torso! For this I actually had to draw the waist/hips as well in order to show it properly, due to the character I'm using for this has a chest(asfemalesusuallydo), which I always start off drawing weird in front views.
So basically you need to draw the shape of the characters chest. Start of with a short line going down from the corners of the triangle that makes up the shoulders. and then curve the line outwards on either side deoending on how, uh, large or small the characters chest is.
The character I'm using has a kinda,,, I guess, medium?? sized chest? Compare to some of my other characters(normally when I draw a character with a small chest, there's barely any curve). It's also cuz of hee waist(?) being wider. (Kinda like my character Buffy)
Speaking of, once you have the shape of the chest drawn, you're gonna want to draw another curved line going outwards from where the line of the chest went inwards.
Much like the chest, you can make the lines for the hips/waist/lower torso curve out alot of barely curve at all, depending on the characters body shape.(an example of a character with a different body shape then this one is my character Ivory; who has a small chest and,,,, wider hips/lower torso,,, which is also called a pear body shape.)
Once you've made the shape of the hips, making sure no to make the lines go inward, you can draw a slightly curve line going from the ends of each line that make up the chest. It's not required, but it helps when figuring out clothes and it's just convient having each main part of the characters body separated by a line when in the sketching stage.
Once again, make sure to erase and redraw ay of the lines if necessary. I have to do that a lot when drawing this part.
Step 7.) Taking the ends of the lines you just drew, make a diagonal line going inward from each side until thise lines meet up.then draw a line from the start of one line to the other, like so:
This makes up the,,,,,,, uh,,,,, pelvis/waist?? area, which'll help with drawing the legs.
Step 8.) Moving onto the legs, first you have to draw the characters thighs. It's pretty simple though, just started it by continuing those lines from the corners of the (upside down)triangle you just made, and then make a line between them:
You're gonna want to draw a thigh gap once you do that, but dont make it to big of a gap, cuz that's super unrealistic and it makes it look more awkward then it already was.
Depending on the pose you want to draw, like if the character was in a pose where they were leaning more on one leg while the other was sticking outwards, then you might not half to draw a thigh gap. But the pose depens on the personality of the charcter you're drawing. For mine, the character I'm drawing is an anxious and antisocial person, so they're legs are closer together due o then feeling awkward in whatever situation they're in.
Once you have the lines for the thighs and such, make a circle where the knee of each leg is. This'll hell when positioning the calf/lower half of the leg.
Step 9.) Next is the calf of the leg. For this you'll want to draw both a straight line and a curved one. In the pose I'm doing, both straight lines are on the inward most side of te leg, while the curved ones are on the outer side:
Like I mentioned before, if the character you're drawing is in a pose where one of their legs is going outwards, their calf and foot would most likely be pointing out to the size, which would cause the back of the calf(aka the curved line) to be going inwards/towards the other leg.
If the foot or calf is facing forward, then the curved line of the calf would be on the outer side of the left, and should only be slightly curved, like in the example.
If the foot is facing inwards towards the other leg, then he curved line/back of the calf is gonna be a noticable curve mostly near eere the line of the calf begins, as seen in the drawing.
If you arent sure by how much, or you wanna make sure that's accurate, then simply use your own leg as a reference! It really helps.
Once you have the shape of the calves drawn, draw another circle between the ends o the lines for the calves where the ankles would be That'll help with positioning the feet.
Step 10.) The feet are the most annoying for me to draw personally, especially when it comes to front views. For this, I highly recommended googling images of feet positions for reference, since I'm not really sure how to go about explaining this:
Tho, dont worry about the feet overlapping in the sketch since one of them has to be in front, and the ither has to be in the back. In my drawing, the foot that's facing to the side will be in the back due to the way it's posed.
If you're doing a front facing foot that is pointing straight head rather then it being slightly angled like the one I drew(of if it is), I recommend making a horizontal line where the toes would connect to the foot.
And then if you want, you can scribble some lines under where the feet are you show the ground under neath them(unless they's floating or something). Orhwrwise you're done with the lower half of your character!
Step 11.) Next we're gonna go back up to the torso of the character, for now it's time to do the arms! Starting with the upper arm.
First you'll need to draw a line going from the corners of the shoulder lines you made earlier:
Depending on the pose, you'll have to draw a line for the inward side of the arm, but if the pose is like the example, then it's not required.
Once you've drawn the lines, you can make a circle for the elbow of the arms, which, as I've said before, will help with the position of the arm.
Keep in mind that your elbow stops right above you're hip bone/pelvis, so that's where you'll want the lines to stop and the circle for the elbow to be.
Step 12.) Once you have the upper arm, you now have to draw the forearm.
The forearm is gonna be slightly curved, the distance of the two lines getting smaller than closer you get to the wrist:
Like I said with the feet, dont worry about the lines overlapping, depending on the position of the arm, like the right(the left one in our perspective) arm in my example, the part that overlaps will be erased, due to it being behind the torso&legs.
Since the tips of your fingers end right above your knee, you'll want to have the lines for the forearms stop at around the mid-thigh.
Though, I have a tendency to give my characters arms/hands longer then they should be, albeit unintentionally, so keep that in mind if/when refernecing my examples.
Now, instead of making a circle where the wrist would be, I simply make a circle for where the hand is gonna be, since the wrist has already been made with the lines for the arms. So;
Circles! Makes sure the circles forthe hands aren't giant(unless the characters species is known for having large hands) and arent to small, becuase that would make them look weird and disproportionate. If the character has hans that are smaller or larger then average then just make them a little bit smaller/bigger then you normally would, and dont exaggerate then to much.
Step 13.) Onto everyones least favorite part. drawing the actual hands.
Now, since the character I'm drawin has her right hand is by her side and mostly behind her, I drew a simple pose and didn't focus on it to much;
This isn't as inportant since only that puter part of her hand will be visible.
Moving onto the other hand, the one that's raised:
What I normally do is draw some of the line for the outer size of the hand, and then draw the thumb.
to draw the thumb, simply draw line where that size of the hand connects to the wrist, and then draw up and outwardly in a slightly diagonal line from the first line. Make sure to use your own hand as a reference on how long the lines should be!!! It's a lot easier then trying to figure out what I mean since I'm bad at explaining stuff like hands and feet.
At about where the midle of the circle is, curve the line back inwards towards the circle, stopping the curve once it's at the middle of straight line. Then you'll wanna curve it outwards again, similar to how you did with the torso, stopping that line between the middle and bottom of the circle.
Step 14.) Once you have the thumb, you'll want to start a straight line where the torso-like curve in the thumb was, bringing the line up to where the line for the outer side or the is:
Once you do that, you can draw a line going from one you the other. This will help with drawing the other fingers, but it's not mandatory. Though for me, I draw that line in both the sketch and when I do the lineart.
Afterwards, you can start the fingers by drawing the index/pointe finger. Using your own hand as a reference, of course.
After that, make a curve from where the index finger connects to the rest of the hand, and then make another line from that going upwards parallel to the index finger.
*BUT WAIT! Don't repeat that step just yet! If you wanna draw hands like I do and have a easier time sanding the fingers and keeping then all on the line separating them from the rest of the hand,
Then when you draw the tip of the middle finger, draw anotger curve right after it! And then finish drawing that finger and move on to the pinky;
That's right, fellas! You can have the middle and ring fingers pressed together if you do this hand pose to save yourself for sone struggle!!!
After you did that, simply draw a straight line down to the where the fingers connect to the hand starting from where you stopped the first curve and started the second one!!!
**the line on the palm under where the inner side of the pinky is, is helpful to have in a situation where the hand would be scrunched up, but not in a fist! I just draw it on there mostly because it makes the hand look better and more accurate in my opinion. Bu of course, for this pose, it's not mandatory.
Now that you've drawn the fingers, you can draw lines where the joints in your fingers are, which replicates the ones on your actual hands! This is helpful to draw, especially when doing more complicated hand poses, and it also makes the poses clearer to a another person. But of course, it's not mandatory, though it is recommended for the sketching stage at least!
And there you go! The hands are complete! Now you can move onto the next chapter to finish this tutorial!
Part two of the tutorial takes you back up to the head of your drawing, were you get to see how I draw faces and hair!
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Hopefully I'm doing a decent job with this tutorial, and if you have any questions then feel free to ask!!!
Onto part 2~!
Character being drawn/All the art in this chapter (c) Me