how to draw female torsos

this video is all about drawing female torsos we'll start with a male and female proportion diagram from there we'll move into some chest and pelvic construction drawings and then we'll draw a few figures from different angles that you can use as a guide there are a few drawings that didn't make the video and i felt like a few other drawings like the diagram and some of the construction breakdowns would be useful to have as a high resolution image and so i've got a link in the description where you can find those i'm david finch if you enjoyed this video please hit like and subscribe and especially share with your friends and before we jump into the video i wanted to just quickly mention that i have a red sonia cover coming up for dynamite entertainment dynamite's got a link up on indiegogo it's not live yet but it will be soon and you can sign up now so i hope you'll give it a look all right we're going to start this video with a male and female diagram drawing they're both eight and a half heads high the half really comes from the neck and the feet and you can see how i have them delineated here i think it's really helpful to do these kinds of drawings just try and notice where i've got all my divisions at the crotch the chest level the belly button the knee the ankle and the bottom of the foot and i wanted to put this in here at the beginning because it really illustrates the difference between a male and female body they're both the exact same in terms of the eight and a half head proportion but a female body has much sleeker limbs less musculature a much narrower chest and wider hips so the focus of this lesson is going to be all about drawing the female chest pelvis and leg connection and so i wanted to start with back i've drawn a line for my back this is basically my spine kind of a line of beauty quickly drawing in a chest shape this is really going to be more about the pelvis in this illustration and so i'm drawing in my pelvis shape along the spine and it's essentially like a swimsuit or a pair of underwear is the shape that i'm drawing you can see i've drawn a circle there for where my leg extends out and there's basically a diagram for where the bone sticks out of there it just represents a quick bone placement for my leg so i know where the hip extends out to and now i'm drawing my leg as a tube coming out from below that and so i'm just going to connect that up i'm bearing in mind where that bone is it's a great landmark bone drawing the bottom of the buttocks and then connecting out to the other landmark bone on that side and then i've gone ahead and just tightened things up a little bit just to make it a little bit more clear now we're going to draw the pelvis from the front same underwear shape it takes on a bit of a different form obviously the buttocks extend out whereas the front of the pelvis doesn't and i'm drawing the same bone sticking out from the sides and now a lot of times i like to draw a bit of a ball just to define that little shape there so i don't have air and it can be a little bit helpful for me and i'm drawing the legs as tubes coming out from below and i'm just going to connect a bit of a stomach area and bottom of the chest just to give it a little placement and i really really like from the front to define my pelvic bone along the top there and i connect that ridge all the way down through the leg as you can see there and then finishing up the the shape of my legs based on that under drawing becomes very very easy for me and i'm extending the pelvis shape up even in through the stomach a center line for the stomach and a belly button and just cleaning up the shape of my leg there just a little bit and then redefining in my underlying shapes just so you can really see it and so this example i really debated putting in here because it turned into a bit of a fiasco with this little mannequin but what this is it's a japanese mannequin that i got i got a few of them just to use his reference i don't really use them to be totally honest and i just lost a leg there and now the other like they just these things come apart so easily so this is a bit of a fiasco which is why i was thinking hey maybe this is not the best example to throw into this lesson but i thought it would still be very useful just to see you can use a model like this and use it as just a bit of a guide for how to draw your own pelvis in space if it's a bit of a challenge and now that i've got that established by the way when i was using that reference my view of it was different than what you see in the camera which is why the angle looks so different than what i'm actually drawing here and so just drawing the same pelvis pelvis shape i've drawn the legs bent and so my tube is just coming out frontward from the leg the everything still applies the same way it did before and i i really feel like a mannequin reference can be helpful if you're struggling to get your forms defined in space and a great thing about mannequins is they're all defined into simple movable shapes which can be actually very helpful when you're trying to draw and so and so i've got my pelvis shape drawn in here based on the reference that i'm using with my little mannequin i'm drawing in a center line for the stomach and then a line outwards where the top of my pelvis goes and then two lines to define the sides of my stomach uh down into the leg drawing my legs as tubes attached to there and now i'm done with my little mannequin again i'm just going to start cleaning up my lines based on my under drawing drawing a little belly button and then redefine my shapes just to make it more clear draw in the top of my pelvic bone and finish up the leg a little bit but before we move on with that figure i think it's a good idea to now stop and do some chest illustrations just quickly to show you how i draw my chest and so what i'm doing is i'm drawing a chest the same way that i would with a male chest it's basically a vest with the arms cut out i like to draw balls for my shoulders just like this and i've got my chest defined just with simple lines and even though it's a female drawing all the same muscles still apply they're just they're just not as defined and so i'm lightening it down just to clean up my lines a little bit so i can go on to the next stage of the drawing drawing in my clavicle establishing just a little bit of the neck i'm using my pectoral definition just a little bit and now i'm drawing in a circle for the breast on this side and a circle for this side it's flatter at the top and rounder at the bottom because of gravity and getting my rib cage defined in below that now when it comes to drawing my breasts i've actually gone through a few different versions of how i do this and the latest one i actually got from i think a japanese artist i found on instagram with a really great diagram and what they do is just above the breast they define in the pectoral just with like a strapping and it really gives me a great placement for where to start the breast instead of starting right up against the clavicle and then i like to draw the breast actually as a bit of a teardrop that goes toward the outside and so i'm defined them in just like this i find for me that just adding in those definitions is a really great way for me to be able to move my bodies around in space and still keep my proportions consistent and now we're going to move on to a side view and so i'm drawing the chest basically from the side it's much more narrow obviously this way drawing in a bit of a center line so it's not completely to the side and a ball for my shoulder defining my arm below that the other shoulder you can slightly see on the other side and just lightening it down just to make it more clear drawing in my strapping above where the brush is going to come out and on the other side also and now i'm going to draw basically my teardrop shaped breast below that and if it's helpful i drew a little diagram there to show that the top part is much flatter than the bottom part because of gravity uh and now the other side you can see a bit of the other breast just on the other side and just cleaning things up a little bit where it gets a little confusing just to redefine some of my form shapes and a bit of the rib cage and i just realized that i didn't draw that breast actually flat on the top and round down on the bottom like i showed my example so i just went ahead and fixed that quickly and so now we're going to draw a chest that you're looking up at this is a the back is much more curved backwards and so you can see the chest kind of from below from this angle so i'm just blocking in my shapes i've got my chest shape my arms already attached and drawing in my pectorals and now the breasts are much rounder and you can see that i've drawn a line for the bottom of the breasts and it's curved around the shape of the the overall chest because their breasts are resting on top of that and you don't want them to be completely flat you want them to round over the shape that's below finding in my center lines and just quickly getting in my form shapes again and i find i do this on finished drawings even where i don't need to but i think drawing them in is a just a really good reassurance for me that i've got the proportions the way that i want them if i can get all those pieces in there then i know i'm in good shape and so now we're going to go back to this figure that we were working on and we're actually going to add our chest shape to it this would be our our vest shape for the the chest a ball for my shoulder i'm drawing up through my center lines i'm just going to attach an arm there really quickly just to make it a bit more of a complete figure and the head i'm drawing in my clavicle my neck and now we're going to clean it up just a little bit and start to define in the same shapes that we were doing just a minute ago i've got my strapping for my pectorals above the breast my breasts are tear drop shapes below that extending out to the outside drawing a center line through them just to make sure that they're rounded forms in space and that it's all working together proportionally and just cleaning that up just a little bit more again and defining in my overall finish drawing this next figure is going to be drawn much more from the side so i'm drawing the side of my chest again not completely from the side it's pretty rare that i'll draw a figure completely from the side because i just don't find it as interesting i think generally there's a little more visual interest when you can see a bit of the front or the back also so it's not completely flat and defining in my pelvic shape and a bit of a ball with my bone landmark defined in there and getting in the tubes for my legs now i'm drawing in a line from one landmark bone to the other through just to make sure that the leg is actually lined up and i find that from this angle it can be really easy to place a leg too high or too low and that's a great solution for that now i'm very quickly drawing in a male figure so my chest shape is much broader my shoulder is larger the arm is obviously much wider and defining in my chest just cleaning things up just a little bit and you can see overall that the proportions are just wider and larger throwing in my pelvic shape here and defining the top of my pelvic bone just a little bit a ball for my hip and then my leg coming up from below that and the stomach is also a little bit more defined generally on a man but you can see that the overall drawing is really the same thing it's just a matter of changing your proportions making it thinner and longer and keeping some more rounding in the lines and so i'm using my under drawing to just quickly get things defined in i've got my strapping so it gives me a great placement for my breasts i'm drawing in here and defining my rib cage below that making sure it all works together drawing kind of my teardrop shape and i think it's it's working i'm pretty happy with how everything sits just cleaning things up a little bit drawing the sides of my stomach and lifting my pectoral just a little bit i felt like that was coming a little bit low and now the center line for my stomach for this next example i wanted to draw a figure where you're really looking much more downward at the figure downward at the chest and downward at the pelvis and this is something that i get asked about quite a bit it can present a problem for people but but the solution is really the same as it always is and that is learning your very basic forms and being able to turn them in space and so i'm looking at the top of my chest here it's my vest shape i'm defining in the sides of my stomach there all the way through up over the shoulders i've got my pelvis drawn in looking down at the pelvis again if you want to use a mannequin for that it can be very very helpful for the chest shape too now the mannequin that i had wasn't very useful for the chest i don't really have one that is but if you can find one i think it could be very useful defining in my legs just with tubes and because i've got my pelvis defined my pelvic landmark bone defined in it makes it makes it very easy for me to place my legs without without them coming out in the wrong place a bit of a ball for the shoulder and just drawing in my arms just to make it a bit more of a complete figure and then placing in my head i've already got the base of my neck drawn in so it makes it much easier for me to know exactly where to place the head and like always when i draw female figures i really never draw the breasts until i've got the overall figure working and it makes it makes it much easier for me to just place them on what i already have and so i've got the strapping drawn in i'm drawing my teardrops they're projecting lower than the base of the chest because you're looking down at the overall chest area but my overall proportions are still working and i can clearly see that because i'm drawing in the same shapes and making sure that they all take up the room that they need drawing my center line then just redefining my pelvis a little bit i'm really still using form lines and in a finished drawing i probably wouldn't go quite so far with the form lines but just for illustration purposes here i wanted to make sure that it's as well defined as it can be the tube for my upper leg my lower leg i will say when drawing limbs or really any shape this is where gesture drawing is so essential because as you do gestures from life and from other artists you'll actually get a really good sense of the overall shape of your limbs and you'll get better at drawing them without without having to define in each little muscle in order to make the overall shape work because the shape is far more important than the muscles that lie underneath it i'm going to draw a line really where her belly button goes there just to make sure that i know where everything lines up for her stomach now i'm going to draw a figure three-quarter kind of from behind uh it's just a bit of a different angle and again i'm starting whenever i draw a figure from behind i really tend to start with a spine i don't know why that is but it just seems to be a way that makes me feel a little bit more comfortable so i've got my chest shape drawn in uh and now along the spine and downwards obviously i've drawn in the top of my pelvis i'm just going to place an arm in there quickly just for placement and throw the other arm in there and uh finishing up my pelvis shape my underwear shape and drawing in my bone that's my landmark so i know that my leg is lined up where it needs to be and just cleaning things up a little bit i find when i use a lot of form lines and i really plan out my figures i can end up with a bit of a mess on the page really quickly so just going through the eraser quickly can really help with that and so i like to draw a ball for the knee and a lot of the ways that i draw my different body parts is very very mechanical but doing it that way just seems to really mentally help me it's easy to get lost in all the little nuances and detail of a figure but you really want to just get the broad shapes working i think that could be very very helpful and so going back into our pelvis just cleaning that up a little bit more i want to make it a little bit more clear how i'm defining my forms and now i'm going to draw the breast so i'm drawing my strap and then the breast projecting below that it's a teardrop shape from the side cleaning it up a little bit and now i can just use all of that under drawing and and draw in a bit more of a clean figure generally speaking i have a real tendency to go all the way through this stage before i'll even put clothing on just to make sure that i'm really happy with the figure and everything's working and then i'll actually put in my detail and it means a little bit more erasing but i get something that i think is a little bit more solid looking that way so drawing in her back placing her shoulder her arm and we're going to move on to a bit of a bonus this is something that comes up quite a bit in questions that i get and that is the difference between male and female anatomy and how to draw you know a female arm or leg or whatever and how that differs from male arm or leg and they really are the very same thing but especially with a female arm you really want to focus your attention on the outline and not over define the muscles so it's a much thinner arm than i would draw for a man generally depending on the man i mean not every man obviously is massively muscular and a sleeker narrower hand with narrower fingers and i just very very lightly define in the muscles with really no detail at all too much detail on muscles for a female figure can be very very distracting all right thank you so much for watching as always be sure to tune in monday nights at 8 o'clock for our monday night draw live stream and i will see you all in the next video

Channel: David Finch

Views: 519,733

Rating: 4.9720025 out of 5

Keywords: drawing tutorial, how to draw, comic art, inking

Id: s9imqdlGPQc

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020