How To Draw Figures in Perspective

this video is all about drawing figures in perspective for this lesson i'm using very very simple gestural figures to get across as much information as i possibly can and show you how easy it is to line up your figures in perspective and then use that original figure to act as a reference for other figures on the page and then finally we'll work on seated figures along with standing figures and even figures standing on different planes higher and lower than each other in a scene i'm david finch i've been a comic book artist for over 25 years if you enjoyed this video please hit like and subscribe and share with your friends if you have any questions or comments please leave them in the description below i really try to respond to as many comments as i possibly can all right to start drawing figures in perspective i've drawn in a two-point perspective so i've got one point here one point here my horizon is running down the middle here and then i've just drawn lines out from those points and then vertical lines that are just parallel across and that gives me a good grid and hopefully you can see i love doing this this really takes me i'm going to say five to ten minutes to do this it is a headache i don't enjoy doing it but it makes such a big difference for me when i'm drawing my actual page that it's really worth the effort and so i'm going to go ahead and just lighten it down and i know this will make it just a little bit more difficult to see in the video but it makes a massive difference for me drawing a finished page because i've got something that i can see and i can use as a guide but it doesn't interfere with the final picture and so i'm going to start with my first figure and i'm going to line up my chest here so that'll be basically my chest and you can see that i'm lining everything up to this point here along my lines going down this way so my head in proportion is going to be just about like that my stomach will be like that my pelvis will be just about here and i'm still following the perspective as i go i figure my knees will be here and then my feet will be just about here and that's pretty approximated but i think that's probably going to be fairly accurate and so i'm just going to use that to start drawing in my figure here's my chest shape going down into my stomach and then my pelvis i think i'll raise it up i came just a little bit low with that drawing shape for my pelvic bone and if you've watched any of my other videos you see me do these kinds of simple figure shapes so my arm draw it in here my elbow is going to line up just about along the belly button approximately and then my hand will be just about there and so i'm gonna get my head in my eyes my nose my mouth everything let me make sure that that fairly proportional all lines up again to my perspective point over here and then my ear and the side of the head will line up to this point and so i just go along these lines so for my eyes and my nose my ear lines up in there back of my head and it makes it very easy for me to get a head that's in perspective and working fitting on my figure and so i want to make sure my elbows as i come down here line up in perspective my wrists will line up in perspective here and then my hands also so there's my my other hand very simply drawn and then i'm going to draw in first one leg my knee will be right about there i like to draw a bit of a ball for my lower leg it's just a shape that seems to kind of help me and then i'll have my foot coming out just like this and now with my other leg my knees will line up in perspective here and i feel like i've probably gone a little bit long with my legs let's just fix that i want this to be decently decently proportional even though it's a simple figure really simple drawings like this are the best place to be able to go ahead and fix those kinds of issues so i'll just do that right now and so there's my foot it's probably a bit better of a length for a leg get my other leg in now i'll just line that up and then my other foot also in perspective and this foot is lining up much more with this line strictly speaking because i want the feet to be splayed i should probably be coming out just about like that with it so it's coming into like a v shape like that [Music] so there's my other foot and so there's my simple figure all drawn in perspective it is a very very easy thing to do and you can see it becomes a bit more of a mechanical process when you work this way but this is how you really create a figure that sits in space and it actually believe it or not becomes very easy to do when you get used to it it's something you really kind of do automatically you really don't have to think about now that i've got that figure in i want to draw another figure in but i don't want to line them up perfectly with the perspective what i want to do is just angle them somewhat i've got my lines running along like this and so all i'm going to do is just make that angle just a little bit more shallow all the way down the figure i'm going to draw my chest shape just about like this and what i'm doing is i want him to i want these figures to be the same size as each other so i'm just going to draw a line here as a guide like that and then for my head i'll do the same thing [Music] and there's going to be my head my chest elvis my knees will be and i'm just coming to about here is where i want to be in space and then my feet will line up just here and so i can very quickly draw in this figure and just make everything just a little bit more shallow so he's not directly in perspective here he the lines for him would actually be going out quite a bit further and you can do that if you want but i just i think that that's taking things a little bit too far and just for actual purposes of work it's it's not something that you could do in any kind of a usable workflow [Music] so my hands are lining up just about here draw my other i think i got a little small with his chest and the nice thing is because i'm drawing these figures in perspective i know very easily if this chest just got a little bit too small in relation to this figure [Music] i'm gonna draw my pelvic bones here really simple my knees are here and my feet come out just about here anyway very simple sketch figures but just get you a sense of of drawing figures in perspective i've got my knees lined up actually to this point so maybe i want to make this one just a little bit higher and i want to make sure that he's not angled to this point i want to just shift them just a little bit more like this and it's something you really need to learn to just be able to eyeball in order to be able to do this well you really don't want every figure to be lined up perfectly with your perspective and so another thing that i really want to point out with this is that while i can line up my fingers this way if i want to draw a figure let's say about there about that large i can bring these lines down to here just about there and then run across and i can pretty accurately get my sizing so if i draw a line down from that i can draw from the bottom of my foot out to here and that's going to bring my feet here and so i can draw my head in and i'm not going to worry about lining up and making sure to size up every element of the body this is where having a good use of simple proportion is very very helpful and you can see i'm already really kind of coming off of it and i think i've come too low with the whole thing so we're just a little low [Music] i want my pelvis above my horizon line just like these figures so there's a very very small figure also in perspective with these ones inaccurately sized based on where he is in space and i did that simply just by using some reference lines as guides and then getting his sizing just like that and while this is a great way to get figures drawn all over a page and it will accurately get your sizes right and make sure that things work properly in space there really is an easier way to do it if you notice i made this figure a little bit wrong earlier and i realized i was wrong when his pelvis went down below my horizon line and so i shifted it upwards and each one of my pelvises is in the same relation to my horizon my horizon is right here and so if i wanted to draw a figure here just about like this i could just draw my horizon or i could just draw my pelvis just above the horizon just like i did with the other ones and he will naturally if i draw everything else in decent proportion be improper perspective because his pelvis lines up with the horizon and that's a much simpler way to get a figure in perspective without having to do all this reference lining up down to here and then across to here drawing my line down to here and then across draw my arms in my hands were just below the horizon line so that's a pretty handy kind of a guide to use again and there's another figure drawn in he's kind of fallen over just a little bit let me kind of fix that and he works in perspective just as well as the other ones but i did it in a much more simple way i can also draw a much larger figure i'm going to draw this is where my pelvis will go here i can have my leg here here's my back my hand is going to be just about here and there's my arm and he's also in perspective with all these other figures because i've lined his pelvis up with the other figures and then just kept everything else in proportion with the sizing that i made for the pelvis it's a very very fast way to do this kind of perspective and so that's the good news the bad news of course is that there are a lot of places where that simple trick just won't work and so i've got my horizon for this panel i've got my horizon way at the top of the page and i'm going to draw my figures down below it and so i can't reference my figures to the horizon since they won't be drawn on it and i'm going to show you how you can still do that fairly easily it's a little bit more difficult and you have to use some of the tricks that we did in the first example and so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to start with a figure down here and so i've got my head lined up my ears going to be here lined up with the horizon going up this way and so there's basically the beginning of my figure [Music] and so now that i have one figure drawn in i can use this figure as a reference to draw figures all across this entire space and so if i want to figure let's say right there what i'll do is i'm going to reference from the top of this figure this way and then from the feet up this way and where this line kind of intersects with the top i'm going to draw a line down and that'll give me my feet down here and that's going to give me my sizing just like that and so i'm gonna draw another figure and again i'm gonna rely on my basic understanding of proportion and because i draw figures all the time i can generally pretty well draw figures proportionately the same figure after figure and that's something you really need to learn and it's just it's really a bit of a repetition thing and so i've got another figure just right here and i can go across this entire picture i can draw a figure all the way down here just by drawing out like this and maybe i'll bring it down i want the figure to be here so i'll bring it down to here so if i draw a line down [Music] the bottom of my figure is going to be way down just about there and so i can pretty quickly let me put it where i actually established it i can pretty quickly establish a figure let me do my sizing working a little bit more accurately here i know i want the feet here so it's pretty easy for me to size the rest of the figure based on that and because i'm drawing such simple figures in there there's really no detail at all they're just really really simple gestural sketches it's really easy for me to adjust my sizing when it comes off [Music] my knees are going to line up my feet will line up there's going to be a figure standing much closer i can draw another figure smaller over here and i'll just use this figure as a reference this time so if i want my figure to be here i'm just gonna guide across just like this and so here's my figure and as i go along my fingers are getting looser and looser but hopefully you see the point that it is very easy and even in a plane like this to get figures drawn in perspective as long as they're all on the same plane so far everything that we've done has had figures standing on the same plane and you can populate an entire scene like this very quickly and easily just using this method and so now this is where things are going to get just a little bit more complex i've got a two point perspective like a one point over here and the other point is just right here and i want to put figures all over the scene at different heights on different objects and make sure that they all fit in the same perspective when you're drawing everything on one plane it stays fairly simple and this is also fairly simple but it takes an extra step and just to let you know also for my incline plane here all i did it's directly vertical from from this point up to this point and so it stays in the same perspective angle and i just drew these lines up to that point and so if i wanted to do a staircase or something like that really this is a pretty shallow plane change here if i wanted a staircase i'd make it a little higher and then i'd have to put that point higher but in order to avoid that i made it fairly low and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to draw my first figure and this will act basically as my reference figure and so here he is i can make them as large or small as i want in relation to everything else and obviously if this was a car i'd want to make sure that he was in proportion to the car but in this case because i want to draw quite a few figures in here and make sure that i get them all in i'm going to draw this figure fairly small so there he is very simple figure and he's drawn on this main plane right here but what if i want to put a figure standing here just about right here and make sure that he's in the same perspective well what i'm going to do is i'm going to line up my figure the same way that i did before so i'm going to come across just like this but because i want him here i want this whole line to start here so i'm just going to eyeball it basically and say that's going to be about the same height as this and if i really wanted to be accurate what i could do is i could just take a piece of paper this is my simple no measuring approach and so i'd have a little hash here and a little hash here and i could just put it here and see just how accurate i was and there i was actually just a little bit tall and so i'm going to put a figure standing just up here he's going to be proportionally in perspective with this figure and it's a fairly simple process to do that i eyeball this so what i'll draw maybe a little bit of a reference guide and then i'll eyeball the height but you actually can do it more accurately the way that i just did and so there's another figure standing on a whole different plane also in perspective and then if i want to put a figure up here and make sure that it's accurate what i can do is draw lines from the top and the bottom of this figure back just as a quick guide and then if i draw a line up and down that's going to give me my guide for my figure sizing just like that so it's going to be about that tall and actually i've come just a little bit further in so let me come a little bit further back with it just make sure it lines up where i wanted it to and so yeah my sizing is just going to be about like that and so all i need to do is take that sizing and put it right here and it's going to be about right just like that and it's a bit of an estimate again i could measure it but there is truly only so much time in the day and what you want to avoid with these you want to avoid figures that are obviously out of perspective linearly and out of perspective with another perspective in terms of their sizing and so this figure is going to be just about this big just like that right there and i could put another figure all the way up here using the same method and i'll just use this figure as a guide now so i'll draw a line from here and from here and obviously i'm not using a ruler just needs to be fairly accurate i think i want to be about here and so that's going to be my height and so i'll just draw that height up there and so here's my figure standing on top of here very very simple to do this obviously these are very simply drawn figures that i've got here and so there's a figure standing on top of that big block up here and i can go through this whole thing i can put a figure over here everywhere on this panel obviously any figure that's going to be on this plane here if i want to draw a figure here i could draw a figure i could draw a guide from this figure just like this and there's going to be where my figure goes here i go in a little bit with the head there but it's a sketch and what i want to do with these sketches is get my sizing once i've got my sizing i really can go in and i can make these much nicer put in detail make sure the anatomy works and get some decent looking figures out of these but for right now i just need my basic sizing in perspective and so there's another figure in my scene drawn fairly accurately and in perspective and i've got figures on multiple different planes and the final thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to draw a figure coming up this plane here and make sure that they're sized properly and so if i draw a figure on the floor directly here what i'll do is i'll just use my guides again that's gonna put my figure just about here so let's draw him in [Music] just like that and then i'm going to use this perspective point that i put way up here and i'll actually use a ruler for this my big long ruler and i can put a figure standing on this incline plane just like that i have to admit it's pretty heartbreaking for you to be drawing a tutorial video with such awful figures in it what i didn't want to do is take a lot of time to draw nice figures and then just show you the completed product so hopefully you understand so the last example that i want to show and i'm just going to do just a simple sketch down perspective for this one too so let's just draw in some quick perspective lines just to get the point across let's get our space established that's going to be good enough that's really all we need and so what i want to do is i'm going to draw some figures standing and i'm going to draw some figures sitting and so i'm going to start with a standing figure very very simple quick gestural sketch [Music] and you can see how quickly i can just gesture in a figure in perspective using the very simplified perspective that i've drawn in just to give myself a guide and so there's my figure in perspective very very simple if i want to draw a figure sitting i'm going to figure that a figure sitting on the ground is going to be just about this height actually so actually this makes it really easy easier than i intended because the head is right on the horizon line so put his hand on the ground here maybe i'll extend this leg out and so i've got a figure on the ground essentially beside my standing figure and so for me to draw another standing figure i'll just do the same thing that i did before very very easy draw a standing figure just like this pelvis in there make sure it's all proportioned decently well quick quick sketch and then my seated figure i've got my head just on the horizon line so it makes it really easy for me to draw another figure in the same pose [Music] so there's another figure also sitting just like the first one [Music] and there it is and i can draw a figure that's proportionally much shorter using the same method so what i'm going to do is i'm going to save my figures just about the height of my belly button so just be like a child and then my feet will be at the same level because they're standing directly beside my other my other figure and so there's my child they should make the head proportionately a little bit bigger because it's a kid really quick sketch and i could just do the same thing right here i'll put them way back here and so i'm going to draw a line out from here a line up from my feet and he's going to be standing on this plane right here [Music] and there he is in perspective and he's a smaller sized figure so it's very easy to get figures in different perspectives and different poses just using your original figure as a guide my child figure lines up basically with the belly button height of my main figure my adult figure and then my seated figure here i've got just about at thigh level or really in this case it's just right on along the horizon i could draw another one very small in the background using the same technique just drawing his head on the horizon and it'll work just fine he'll look like he's in perspective back there all right for this final example i've just gone ahead and drawn in a quick scene with some buildings and a simple mild three-point perspective so my horizon line you can see is actually just up here at the top of the page and so all my figures really would be referenced from that and so for me to start drawing some figures into this page i need to start with a reference figure and because i already have my buildings drawn in i know that a figure for this scene would be just about that tall for a building i think that's about right so there's my reference sizing right there and so i'm going to bring that across and down here across and so a figure standing on the sidewalk would just be about that big and so let's go ahead and just draw a figure walking down the sidewalk there i'm gonna have to erase out truthfully for any finish page i would never go quite so tight not that this is all that tight but i would never draw in my backgrounds to this extent because erasing the figures out from it is more of a headache than anyone needs all right and so there's a very simple figure kind of walking down the sidewalk tighten up some of the pencils around just a little bit just to finish it out i can erase this i really don't need that at this point and i'm gonna draw another figure leaned up against the building so i figure i'm gonna put him just about just right here and the fact is that what you want is a very good approximation getting things down to a mathematical perfection i would be pretty admirable i guess but it's just not something that's feasible for meeting a deadline so this is really how i would approach it it's relatively simple i'm gonna draw another figure walking this way into the panel on the ground here and so what i'm gonna do is extend this back out this way i'm coming off the panel here but i can pretty well infer and so if i want them to be about here that's going to line up just about here and my verticals are about like this and so that is about here and so my figure [Music] would be just about this size right here and here he is walking into the scene at the bottom here and obviously a pretty simple figure but getting your fingers sketched in is about as detailed as you really want to get because you want to be able to make sure that the sizing is the sizing and spacing and relationships in space all work before you go in and draw too much detail i'm going to draw somebody up on the balcony way up here and i think that my balcony is going to be just about level with my second floor here the truth is in a comic i would just fake in the size it's really it's really beyond the level of work that i would bother to go to for a figure that stands really not so much in relation with the other figures in the panel but for the sake of this i've got a sizing just about that big right here and so i'm gonna start at my window level about here and i'm gonna go up just about that size again i think that's about like this and so bringing it across i'm looking at a size that would be something like this and i'm gonna i want my finger to be more like here [Music] and so this is about the size that i want to get to with my figure [Music] there he is on the balcony he's on the second floor closer to us looking into the rest of the scene and he sized in pretty well with the rest of the scene and that places that balcony at the same level as those windows but you can see it's all simple approximations i don't go in and mathematically map anything out it just isn't feasible to do that so i'm going to draw a figure walking across the street maybe here we go this figure is going to be about like this but i want it to be in the middle of that crosswalk so i'm going to bring it right about to here and so here's my figure and roughly sketching it in [Music] and maybe i'll give them a shopping cart that they're pushing it's all in perspective close enough and i could draw a child next to them just by inferring from about that level there i guess depending on the age of the kid and so here's a child walking down the street [Music] and now i want some figures across the street way over here and i'm just going to use my reference figure again i'm going to bring that all the way up through here and i want my figure to be about here about here and so i'm going to draw through and i think i'm just about gonna be this size right here and so let me go ahead and draw a figure in there got his hands in his pockets and there's a figure across the street and so i want another figure behind this figure walking and it makes it very easy for me to just draw another figure in there i'm just referencing all my sizing with the original figure i can draw another figure further up here we go getting really loose with these now and maybe another figure beside them so i'll just extend down this way there's another figure right there i'm going to draw a figure walking up to the car here and so i'm going to infer this figure across i think i want my figure to be right about here so if i draw that line up it's going to be right about there that's gonna be right about there and that'll be my figure right here and he's reaching for his keys he's got his keys in his hands he's gonna get into his car [Music] and i'm going to draw another figure with the head just poking out here but i want to make sure that my sizing is pretty good so i'm just going to extend my head down this way and so i think my sizing would be just about like that and that's basically it it's actually a very simple thing to draw multiple figures into a scene and make everything sit on the same plane and make everything sit in the same basic perspective it's not a complex process at all and once you have it at this stage you can go back in and tighten it up and get some proper detail all right that's going to wrap this one up thank you so much for watching apologies for the very simple figure drawings in this lesson but i wanted to get across as much as i possibly could as quickly as i could and i want to show you in real time me drawing the stuff rather than doing something more elaborate and just cutting in and showing you finished drawings my next tutorial video will be up in two weeks and be sure to tune in monday nights at 8 o'clock for our monday night draw live stream with meredith and dave and i will see you in the next video

Channel: David Finch

Views: 363,900

Rating: 4.9878368 out of 5

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

Id: Ub19UehR8rc

Length: 31min 12sec (1872 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021