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 '16last reply
Jan '16- 14
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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.
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
Have you tried using "guidelines7" when drawing?
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.
Here's some methods I've used, mebe one will help.
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.
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
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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"
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: !
Do you mean foreshortening?
The thing with dynamic angles is that you need to understand perspective alongside proportions. It's a lot but here are a couple of charts regarding foreshortening!
Linking this one because its rather long but gets into the explanation pretty well3
Theres also this video that's 16~minutes and uses a different method than the box
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