Drawing people with breasts
April 26th, 2008Women that is. (Or large fat men.) Luckily for your eyes, I’m dealing with the former.
I don’t know if people utilize “wire frames” for drawing people, but all I personally just start with a circle. For the head. I guess a frame would help out my anatomical proportions, but I’m lazy.
So first up, you have a circle. Nowadays I start every picture with one. Sometimes it looks like didn’t even need it. Like this picture below. Maybe it’s a force of habit, but I still think it helps me size things up.
Anyway, the head leads to the body, with some random pose. Jibtip: A standard straight view, 3/4 profile view, or anything else of the like are extremely boring in my opinion. Hide an arm, have the person’s head face elsewhere from the body, or whatever! I think it leads to a better picture overall.
At this point I still didn’t know whether I was drawing a girl or a guy. Well now you can see which side won out. Don’t think there’s too much of a difference in drawing either. For girls, I typically have narrower shoulders, a smaller arm to leg width ratio, and have their hips about the size of their shoulders. And boobs.
As for anatomy itself, I pretty much guess. I imagine the elbows being around the end of the ribcage, with the boobs around halfway between the elbows and collar. I think I should prolly devote some time to actually studying some real anatomy, but I’ve managed well enough without seeing the need to do so. There are those who will tell you that a foundation in anatomy is absolutely necessary before even trying to delve into manga or cartoony styles. I say that’s garbage. Yes, my drawings “suffer,” as they’re not perfectly correct. (For example, I have a tendency to draw large hands and high waists) But where’s the fun in that? The key is to draw something with mismatched proportions and still have it look great. That, is style. If I were to critique myself, I’d say I drew her body frame too small in relation to her head. She’s rather thin too.
I add some basic color in, to see what blend of skintones, clothing, and hair work best. I throw on some shading, change the haircolor (I changed my mind), and it’s done!
So while it turned out decent, I have no idea how to shade properly. I try to be mindful of a light source, but I don’t have too much knowledge on how light falls on objects. As for painting technique, I try to copy from Falcoon, and Furiae. Falcoon is an artist for SNK and I like the way he draws. His site only has pictures and Japanese text, unfortunately. Now Furiae.com is a great website. It contains many useful tutorials on painting people that actually work! If you go to her site, you will quickly see that she is a master at painting portraits.
I guess I would say this is how I learn any anatomy at all. Not by studying actual books or diagrams, but looking at other people’s paintings.