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May 2021

Hello, I am trying to learn to draw exaggerated body types. I followed a reference and drew a figure, I tweaked the pose a bit, and I hope you guys can correct me if I drew anything wrong. The side muscles of abs is quite confusing, and I think I definitely drew it wrong. Leg muscles are very difficult, I drew all the muscles I could understand, but as you can see, it's not much.
I'm 16 years old, so please keep this thread SFW.
I'm looking to draw different poses aswell, but that's for another day. My head is wrecked trying to draw muscles.

I uhh, gave this figure a lil touch of character design, donno if you could see that hehhehe

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    May '21
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    May '21
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No one will give you the right answer. Everyone has their perspection on the subject. On top of that comes their personal taste and the purpose given to the drawing they want to do.

Just keep drawing until you won't need references - It will come intuitively to you - but I do recommend you to build some knowledge by drawing from pictures, for example. Search for croquis cafĂŠ - they have good exercises and pose videos to begin with.

Good luck!

Hi i think before you’re trying to draw advanced muscles, you just need to draw stick figure first, getting used to them. And when you feel familiar enough, try add a lil bit of muscles in various pose, and when you have muscle memory and knowledge how to draw them, you can add abs etc. When you’re not familiar with anatomy, diving right into muscle indeed would be extremely hard. Learn the fundamentals. Try baby step first.

Here from this.


To this

And finally thisone.

Also keep drawing. Look at reference. One of those quick live drawing sessions would be very helpful.
Here try this one.
https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing12

whoaa just took a look at croquis cafĂŠ and i love it! Definitely will try using them as reference

I think I already understand basic anatomy, so i'm trying to get into learning muscles. I like the website you provided, the photos look really helpful! thank you. I'll try drawing some of those tomorrow. It's getting late today.

before drawing exaggerated/stylized its good to learn the basic and study anatomy alot!
here is some pinterest boards I like to visit myself sometimes when doing some anatomy studies/needing to understand the muscles better.

and as mentioned above, figure drawings is a great way to practice :sparkles:

It´s amazing how good you already are at the age of 16.
I didn´t know any of this or was interested in anatomy when I was years older than you.
Very good

You got some very good advice from the other members already.
When I could turn back time and start again I would approach figure drawing like that:
-first step perspective, this may sound weird to you because most people connect perspective
with backgrounds but you need perspective for figure drawing
-gesture / line of action, you can easily train that with quick sketches, it becomes fun after some
time, focus on only the form, no details, no muscles yet
-then form and shape, learn to draw in the ribcage, pelvis, head, arms, legs in perspective
with simple shapes
When your figures look good then it´s time to learn anatomy, insertion of the muscles, function
etc and it will be easy for you when you followed the first steps

It´s really great that you are already so good at your age, don´t forget the fun :smiley:

don't stray from the path of buffness
you're doing great, keep it up

I'm not great with muscles either (in fact I think you're better than me. especially when it comes to leg muscles :)) but what really helps me to better understand them right now, is taking an anatomy book for artists (i've got one for about 10 Euros), drawing the images of the subjects several times and while drawing, looking also at 3D anatomy figures and turning them around to better understand the different angles (here for example1, but there are also dozens of other apps).

Apart from that, looking at videos of men training (boxing, weight lifting and so on) might also help.

Had to look those up. They're called "fossa lumbalis lateralis" and not everyone has them. If I understood correctly, it has to do with how your pelvis is formed.

That looks good. :tapa_pop: I’m sure you’ll quickly get the hang of it. This is infectious, i want to do posture sketches right now. :smile_01:

thank you! If you do decide to do pose sketches, do share them with me, I wanna see it. You can share it in this thread, i don't mind at all :smile:

When you're ready to and want to draw (overexaggerated) muscular bodies again I can recommend "Strength Training Anatomy" by FrĂŠdĂŠric Delavier for in-depth learning how muscles work. It's not an artist reference book but one for bodybuilders, but it's really great & greatly illustrated. Helped me more than any specialized artist reference book.

whoaa so amazing!! the first one gave me the impression of a beautiful goddess haha, with the flowey cloth and amazing pose