Exercise 0B: Male and Female Bodies

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You’ve seen how to draw men’s and women’s faces differently in this previous exercise.

Now, let’s take a look at how to draw the complete body for men and women! This animation shows how to measure out bodies for men and women using the head as a standard measure. Later, we’ll show each step so that you can follow us in redrawing the body!

The first step to think about (after warming up) is setting up a simple measuring bar. This helps you prevent a common accident in drawing — running out of room on your paper to draw the whole person! The average person is seven and a half (7.5) heads tall. The nicest way I’ve found to make this measure is by drawing two lines on the page. Start with one from the top, that goes about halfway down the page. Divide it into 4 measures. Next, start a second line off to the side. Begin in the middle of the bottom measure of the first line, and go to the bottom of the page. The second line should be the same length as the first line.

Each line has 4 sections, which adds up to 8. However, because they overlap, the total height is seven and a half (7.5) heads tall.

Now we lay in some basic shapes to help give character and body to the figures.

Women tend to have more curves, so we use ovals to measure. Men are more angular, so we use squares.

Let’s look over the female figure on the left first. We start with an oval head that is one measure tall. Moving on down, we leave some space for the neck. The next oval down is the ribcage. Women’s ribcages tend to be narrower then men. Their hips are wider then men’s! Keep that in mind when you watch CSI and police shows! This is one of the ways they tell male from female skeletons. The ribcage is a vertical oval like the head, centered on the second measure. Leave some space for the spine! The hips are a sideways oval, the size of a head, which starts at the third measure.

The male figure on the right starts with a rectangular head. We leave some space for the neck, and then draw a ribcage that is twice as wide as the head! This prepares your manly drawing to have a famous pair of broad shoulders. After leaving some space for the spine, we can draw a square set of hips, which are as wide as the head is tall.

For the legs, I’ve used cylinders for the bottom of the female thigh, and egg shapes for the female calf. The men are still getting squares (cubes if you like!). The legs are measured like so: the knee bends at two heads above the ground, and the calf measures one head high.

We measure arms out using the belly button and the bottom of the fourth measure. The shoulder starts a little up and to the side of the ribcage. I’m connecting the ribcage and shoulder with some anatomy, which we’ll cover in another exercise. The belly button floats right near the top of the hips, and if you imagine the arm hanging straight down, the elbow should bend at that level. The forearm stretches down about a head, and the wrist bends right above crotch level. The hand is about half a head when fully extended.

You can check all this out by standing in front of a mirror and holding your arms at your sides!

At this point, I lay in a few more connections using muscles and anatomy. (It’s magic! But we will cover it again in a later exercise.) For now, keep the female curves and the male angles in mind, and see how the different parts flow into each other. I think it’s also important to point out how there is muscle connecting from the shoulder to the mid neck. The neck may have seemed too long before, but this muscle balances that out.

At this point, you can really add in all the details you want! Face, fashion, hair — It’s all up to you! by having the proper measures underneath, the clothes will look “right” because they’re following a human form. I usually ink my details using Sakura Microns.

The reason I use Microns is that I can erase my pencil easily, and the micron ink stays behind! I can now take my final line art and use it in a comic, or color it first. Here, again, is the final inks of this piece.