How to Draw People
Learning how to draw people is often a challenge, even for artists who can draw many other things easily. However, once you know how to draw people, you are suddenly open to a whole new world of artistic possibilities. You can draw your friends, big-city executives, small-town farmers, dancers, athletes… and that's just the humans! With just some minor tweaks, you'll also be able to draw faeries, elves, vampires, aliens, dolls, androids…
So how do you go about learning how to draw people?
The number-one thing to do - as cliché as it sounds - is practice. At the very least you need to develop a certain level of hand-eye coordination which you won't have otherwise.
Beyond that, there are a few other tips to keep in mind…
Gesture Lines
Gesture lines or "action lines" show the main action of the body. They're usually a single curve or an S-curve which can be used as a very basic guideline for drawing the rest of the figure. It's usually best to draw a gesture line before you draw anything else, and base the rest of the drawing off the gesture line.
Proportions
Proportions is a comparison of how large one body part is in comparison to another body part. There's some general proportions which can be applied to most people - for example, most adults are seven heads tall. Many websites and books include lists or charts of general proportions and some will even break down the proportions into sub-groups (Male and Female; Adult, Adolescent, and Child; Athletic, Average, and Slender; etc.) Of course, actual proportions vary from one individual to another, but knowing some basic proportions will help you quickly start out your drawings. You can adjust the proportions to better match the person you're drawing as you go along.
Other Guidelines
If you try to go straight from the gesture line to a finished drawing, it's easy for the proportions to end up a little off. A better way to draw people is to put in more guidelines to help you along to the finished product. The most common method for this is a "stick figure" or "skeleton," which usually uses the guideline as the spine of the drawing. By putting in the whole figure as a stick figure first, you can notice problems with the proportions immediately and fix them before you've spent too much time on the drawing. Be sure to draw very lightly at this stage, so you can erase the guidelines when the rest of the drawing is done.
