Soizic Mouton - How to Draw a Character: The Foolproof Method

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To my mom,
who taught me to watch,
and to take note

Give a kid their first set of crayons, and generally the thing they will want to draw is a human figure. But as we grow up, we may want to move on from that typical stick man imageadding more life and personality to our drawings, but without losing the spontaneity that can make every drawing a moment of pleasure. The secret is in learning to look: I love watching peoplethe way they stand, the kind of moves they make. And by looking, you start learning, too: how to position the various elements of a face, get the arms and legs moving in the right places, make the hands look right, get the hair to look like hair. Its all essential stuff, and its not magic! Soon enough, you will discover how to bend the rules of anatomy to create really dynamic characters that are full of personality. With just the right pose and facial expression, we can make our characters tell a whole story in one simple drawing. So now get set to start drawing your own storiesand say good-bye to the stick man!

Soizic Mouton

Whether you are drawing male or female figures, they are pretty much made up of all the same kinds of things: theres a head, a body, two arms, two legs. So far, so simple. But there are certain aspects of the human body that we often forget about, and which help us understand how all the other parts move and work together. And knowing about these will help you to draw your figures more precisely. Whats more, the big differences between male and female bodies will add a lot of personality to your drawings, whether you choose to follow the typical traits, or to ignore them completely!

Whenever you start out drawing a figure, you have to think about the human bodys proportions right from the get-go. Some of these are pretty universal, linked to how our skeleton is made up. Others depend on our individual body shape, and so can vary enormously from one person to another. Its these that make us all unique, and which will give you a sure way to put a lot of personality in each character!

A head is more or less round, and is joined to the shoulders by the neck. In reality, the neck muscles actually start right below the ears, while the shoulders are always wider than the head. But when youre drawing, you can change all that.

Next, comes the torso. Remember, you need to leave enough space for:
a. breathing
b. eating
c. going to the bathroom

The bend of the elbow is halfway down the arm. But if you include the shoulder, the upper arm is then a little longer than the forearm.

With the arms down, the ends of the fingers will come roughly to the middle of the thigh. And by adding just a few more details, you get a guy ready for a swim!

Aaagh! Hands are soooo scary! Yes, even for hardened professional artists, hands can give us all a big headache. So to help you draw them, here are some tips that someone once gave me: I still think about these every time I start drawing.

Hands are certainly hard to draw, but feet can be just as tricky! Compared with other parts of the body, the shape of a foot is often hard to figure out, which does not make things any easier. Take a look at how a foot is made up and if you dont get the result you were hoping for, draw on some shoes: they solve the problem, and are great fun to draw!

From the side, you can build a foot from a triangle that roughly shows the bone structure inside the foot.

This triangle helps us to think about a foot in different positions.

Seen from the back, youll notice that the anklebone on the outside of your foot is higher up than the one on the inside. And whats in between them? The Achilles tendon!

As the head is connected directly to the skeleton, its movement is subject to some pretty strict rules that are worth keeping in mind when drawing a figure. But the head is also made up of a whole bunch of parts that vary enormously from one person to anotherand that provide a lot of the fun when youre drawing. You can combine all these individual traits in an infinite number of ways to create figures bursting with character.