We have all been there. We see a person and you want to capture that moment with them. You draw their beautiful face and give them some hair only to see everything about the drawing looks a little odd. Getting your proportions correct can be the difference between a high-end quality painting vs a cartoon looking art fail. Once you master the basics, you will have more control to manipulate the sizes for more dramatic and emotional effects.
Below are 4 ways to make your human drawing look a little more well… Human.
Head shape:
Does your drawing look a little like the drawing above. Always remember, the eyes should be in the center of the head. Remember, your subject has a begger brain than you may be giving the credit for. Often people do not draw the head high enough and get the flat head. Like they are missing half their brain! Please, do not draw your loved one, and gie the only room for ahalf a brain.
How to fix:
Generally speaking, you should start with drawing the whole head first. If the person is looking straight ahead, then their eyes should be drawn half way down. If they are looking up, the eyes should still curve around the head at the mid-point will just be facing up too.
Let’s face it, we all love to draw the eyes first, or maybe even another feature that captures us. Then we draw in the head later. When you do this, simply measure the length from the eyes to the chin. Then mark the same distance from the eyes to the top of the head. If you came in short, just give them more hair. That’s right pile on the hair. It will not look like an 80’s prom queen. We have enough hair to cover the top of our heads. (unless the person is bald.) You can also add a hat, scarf, or whatever you need to do to give them a bigger skull to fit that beautiful brain of theirs.
Eyes too close or too far apart.
As a general rule, there should be the distance of one eye between the eyes. Now, this rule only works for a face aimed directly forward and we all have slightly different face arrangements, but this is a really good rule of thumb. So, if your eyes are about 1 inch wide, there should be about 1 inch between the eyes too.
How to fix:
As we all now we should always measure and draw light lines before we put in details. But if we already put in both eyes and they are too far apart or to close, there are still some tricks. If the subject is wearing make-up, use the make-up make the eyes wider or smaller. Make-up can change the appearance of people in real life, and on the canvas. If they are not wearing make-up you can still achieve some flexibility with shadows. And if all else fails, give them a hairstyle that covers up one eye.
Tiny hands:
Hands are weird when it comes to drawing. So many long fingers that look dangly. We think of them as being items way down at the bottom of our arms. But in reality, they actually take up about 1/3rd of our arms. Really. Measure for yourself. From the wrist to the tip of your middle finger, it is the same length as your wrist to your elbow. And from your elbow to the just below your shoulder. Cartoony hands are usually even bigger than that!
How to fix:
We all know the infamous pose of putting the hands behind the back. So, yea you can do that. But if you really want to be a great artist, this is something you will need to master. Measure the lengths of the arm and make sure you draw the hand to scale. The bone that sticks out on your wrist to the tip of the longest finger should be 1/3 of the arm when looking straight on. When the hand is coming toward you, it will be a lot bigger than the arm. Practice drawing the hand over and over. Use your non-dominant hand to be your model. Yes, you can be a hand model!
Tiny head:
The body should be about 7 ½ of the head size on an adult. On a toddler body is about 4 head sizes and a baby’s head can actually be about half of the full body’s size.
Often for fashion design the legs will be a little longer, add on one extra head size to the length.
How to fix:
If the head is too small, you can always add hair. Yes, hair fixes so much. You can also add a hat, or anything to make the head look bigger. If the face proportions are off because of this, then give them some sunglasses. Sometime a little re-drawing of the legs to make the shorter can also help.
If the head is too big, they may look more like a child. So, you can own that. Or add onto the legs. If the subject is wearing a dress, you can add ruffle or another layer to the dress to make it appear longer. If the subject is wearing pants, you may need to erase the shoes/feet and redraw them. Pants often fold a little at the cuff, so you can use that to your advantage to hide the eraser marks.