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Jan 2016

I always mess up proportions when I'm drawing any tips? I can make proportions look alright when drawing exactly from reference but even then stuff looks off.

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    Jan '16
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    Jan '16
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Can you sepcify what exactly you mean? Like proportions within the face/ body, or the body in relation to other objects/backgrounds?

I know this answer might sound generic, but the best tip to give is: practice practice practice frowning
Have you tried using "guidelines7" when drawing?

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I can only say keep using real-life references (Pinterest is great for that) but if you're really desperate, research other artists. People say referencing from another artist is "copying" or "cheating" but if it's for practice and building your foundation then I don't think there's a problem. It's like seeing an already solved method to an equation. Just don't post them if you're insecure about it.

There are some tips to make you remember proportions.
Like one hand = size of the face, one foot = size of the forearm, usual distance between the two eyes = one eye....

Is this what you're looking for?

Here's some methods I've used, mebe one will help.

  • Trace the figure in order to get a better understanding of the form.
    Then try to reference-draw the trace, then freehand and repeat.
  • Flip your image horizontally and correct your mistakes.
  • Look at one body part while drawing the other. This works really well
    for eyes, but I also use it for general symmetry.
  • Measure your proportions. I know this is really boring but sometimes
    you just have to do the work to train your eyes.
  • Chop up your figure. All artists have their own way for dividing the
    figure into different shapes and guidelines. This makes it more
    efficient to draw, but it also trains your eyes to recognize
    proportions and comes in handy when you try to draw perspective. Find
    a method of building a figure that works for you and keep it
    consistent.

No matter what methods you try, the only way you can train your eyes is to draw over and over again. Doodling helps.

Good luck man :V

Even using reference can be tricky, yeah!

What I do to make sure I don't screw up is use guidelines. The stuff @zerofruits posted is very useful, and I'll follow up on that.

These are in Swedish, but the guidelines should be easy enough to understand anyway. On the upper left is a method I learned for how to think of the torso vs. the hips, and that is to imagine the ribcage to be a kind of oval-ish sphere, and to think of the hips as a kind of box, and then to imagine them being stacked on top of one another in a sack. There are more examples of that directly below in the lower left. When the torso-sphere tilts one way, the hip-box tilts the opposite way to keep the person from falling over, and the shape of the stomach follows that, etc.

On the lower right is a quick and dirty proportion-rule I use to double-check my figures. The distance between the tip of the nose to the dip in the collarbone is equal to the distance between the dip in the collarbone to the bottom of the sternum, which is equal to the distance between the bottom of the sternum and the bottom of the ribcage (but drawn at an angle outwards), and that distance is equal to the distance between the bottom of the ribcage and the edge of the hipbones, etc., etc. This isn't always true, but it's a good thing to keep in mind while drawing - it will prevent you from drawing freakishly elongated torsos, or hips that just don't work, etc.

Oh, and here's a bunch of facial construction scribbles I drew for a friend once:


(also, behold my neat and tidy handwriting!)

Study both real life and various art styles. It helps your brain actually connect how it all hangs together and the reasoning behind comic art anatomy. You will not be able to do rounded, living comic art unless you understand real life anatomy, and you will most likely have great difficulty finding your own swift, natural style to use on the whim (comic artists should ultimately be able to work fast) if you do not understand what to enhance and focus on, what to exaggerate and what to ignore when transforming it into comic anatomy.

These are all very helpful, I tend to forget these a lot when I haven't drawn in a while. My biggest problem is legs and arms end up being too long or too short.

Have you ever heard of Andrew Loomis? He has some good books on proportions and artistic anatomy - I think they are good study material!

But the internet is full of reference material wink
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Basically the arms (finger tips) should reach about the middle of the thighs - and with legs, it kinda depends on your style? In fashion drawings, legs are longer than usual haha But I think in most cases the legs are about "4 heads long"

Standard Human Body proportions2

For proportions I often check them based on itself, meaning certain lengths should be the same as others, such as shoulder to elbow and elbow to the wrist.
Or the elbow should be about where the navel (bellybutton) line is.
Or more drastically, the length of the middle of the head to the hips should be around or at the same length of the middle of hips to either the ankles or feet.
Plus many more instances. These tricks, although I may be wrong but I've gotten better at them, allow for me to practice without too much reference, and allow me to just eye up the lengths approximately. At some point I believe that proportions get easier as you go along, that the skeletal forms you draw just fit with the proportions you've set on.

People say that copying from a photograph is also 'cheating' too : p!
It's usually not a good thing to copy from other artists, especially if your foundation skills are already a little wobbly, because you never know if what you're copying is 'right'. Artists still have their stylization even when it comes to something as common as foundation skills, some may make the torsos a bit longer, the legs shorter, so on so forth and you wouldn't be able to tell unless you've already learned the proper proportions of the human body. It is a good idea to 'copy' if the artist's style is something you aim for in your art/style however.

I can't say anything else without repeating all the good advice in this thread p: !

People always post and show that character sheet with heads and profiles, but does anyone have any good recommendations for proportions in regard to dynamic angles?

Draw the silhouette first help me a lot with proportions and general shapes of the figure. You can see your mistakes easily and is also quick to make corrections before start to draw all the details and sutff. Also it keeps the action clear smile

Some samples I made