How to Draw the Human Neck

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Pencil
Drawing paper
Kneaded eraser or white eraser
Friends or family members to model for life drawing.

Step 1

Woman's neck in profile for a portrait bust

Copy this loose sketch of a portrait bust. This is just a head shape set on a neck with the bust sectioned off at the sides. It leaves out the shoulders, chest, everything else about anatomy and simplifies the head -- showing the graceful angle of a neck from the side.

The human neck is not a simple straight-edged cylinder as if the person was wearing a soup can around it. That looks mechanical and unreal. It has a tapered curve shaped by the anatomy of spine and muscles, and a man's neck may also show his larynx prominently. Our next sample sketch will be a man's neck from the side, showing the differences. This is a woman's neck in our first example.
Step 2

Gesture sketch of a man's neck in profile

For sketching, don't be afraid to use multiple lines. Redraw your good new lines without removing the old, unless you're going to ink it. Even then, don't erase till you're all done unless you get too confused. Sketches look fine with extra lines all over them. Even Leonardo da Vinci had tons of extra lines and scribbles on his anatomical sketches.

One thing that helps a lot is drawing from life. Find people in your household who are willing to sit still for a quick sketch. Don't ask them to hold still longer than two or three minutes, but just draw the neck. Do a line or two or a scribbled oval for the shape of the head and leave it at that, but doing studies of particular parts of someone's body fast is easier on both model and artist. You learn a lot from life sketching repeatedly. Most people will put up with gesture sketching now and then (what poses under five minutes are called).

This is a gesture sketch of a man in his thirties, heavyset but not fat. He has a little extra flesh under his chin and his Adam's apple is not as prominent as it would be in a very thin man, or a man with a large Adam's apple, or a teenager where it's sometimes very bold. The next sketch will be of a young man's neck in profile.
Step 3

Young man's neck in profile showing Adam's apple

This third example is a young man with a long neck and prominent Adam's apple, seen from the side. It's familiar if you think about young men you've met, you can see it bobbing up and down while they talk. Long necks are seen as graceful and feminine, but in reality women sometimes have short wide necks and men long narrow ones. But a man's long narrow neck is most likely going to show the bony bulge of his larynx.

The best way to get accuracy in human proportions, any human proportions, is to do a lot of quick sketching. If some part of a serious drawing is giving you trouble, try drawing that part several times in your sketchbook before fixing the sketch for your drawing or painting. Ask people who have similar proportions to model for it, or check good photo references of people with similar builds.

I could go on with profile necks in several other areas, children's necks won't have the prominent larynx and their heads will be larger in proportion to them, old people's necks may show folds of skin and wrinkles especially if they have lost weight and loose skin sags. But it's better to do those from life or good references, and we can move on to other angles for the neck.

Here's the young man's neck, with Adam's apple seen from the side. If you want to draw a young man and a teen girl is modeling for you, this is the way to change the neck so your character looks masculine:
Step 4

Young woman's neck seen from direct front

Necks from in front show some other features, depending on how thin or heavy your model is. I'm going back to a long-necked young woman for this. If you do fashion illustration, you may want to exaggerate how long her neck is, along with her arm and leg length to get that "fashion" look.

Notice the two little lines I drew at her collarbones. Those indentations show on teenage girls, on dancers, on models, on any thin woman. Those are her collarbones, the shadow of her collarbones against her smooth skin. The neck tapers a little as it meets her shoulders, it's slender compared to the head, and her collarbones are prominent because she's thin.

Collarbones can be prominent on a man too, though his neck is likely to be at least a bit wider and his bones are likely to be coarser. Look closely at photo references and models for the shadow formed by the collarbones and be sure to place it well to give the impression of thinness. Those lines imply a hollow. Sometimes it's rendered with one U shaped shadow line, but always a very faint line because it's not the hard outline of the edge of the neck.
Step 5

Muscular man's neck in bent pose, shoulder up, 3/4 view.

Muscular man's neck at a 3/4 angle, with one shoulder up. The way neck muscles interact with other muscles is complex, it changes with pose and shadowing with where light is falling on the model. Look closely at this sketch when you copy it, and see how the long muscle of his neck goes forward to meet his collarbone. This man is fairly muscular and may be a bodybuilder, though he's not quite as muscular as the superhero in Step Six.

Sketch from famous artists' sketches too. Any painting by da Vinci or any classical painter may show neck anatomy beautifully, and sketching from famous paintings is how many artists learn to draw. Leonardo's sketches are very useful to this day in teaching people how to draw.
Step 6

Very muscular young man's neck, full front showing muscles.

A muscular young man's neck in full front. This guy is a bit overdeveloped, more of a superhero or workout champ than a normal guy. His muscles are so prominent that they are easier to draw, so you can see where they are and compare them to the neck musculature on everyone. All human beings have these neck muscles. It's just that on women and children and guys that are a bit plump, they may be covered by more smooth skin and fat layer, the hollows between them may not be as prominent.

Notice the triangle formed by his muscles as they go down from the sides. When those muscles are built up, they seem to start higher on the neck -- but that muscle is there in the pretty girl's neck too. His larynx is situated between those two long angled muscles that come from the corner of his jaws to meet at the center making a vee with his collarbones -- the same muscles that left collarbone hollows on the girl.

His bones are heavier too and a faint shading line shows between his pectoral muscles. This one is almost an anatomy drawing. If you know any body builders, get them to pose for you. They have exaggerated musculature and often less fat under the skin especially if they slim down right before an event, so it's very easy to see where every muscle attaches. You can also study an anatomy book and sketch the muscles directly, then draw them with the skin on. Hollows will create shadows, bulges will get highlights.

When painting from these sketches, it's easy to run a highlight along something as prominent as collarbones or heavy muscles or folds of skin. Sketch repeatedly and then look back at the sketch while painting to know where to put the highlights and shadows in.
Step 7

Young woman turning her head in torsion pose, one shoulder up.

Woman's neck with her head tilted up and to the side, while her body's at another angle. One shoulder (near shoulder) is a little higher in this lively pose. Look at the way her muscles and collarbones echo the heavy muscles in the men's neck examples. These structures are there in everyone, and whether they are prominent depends on whether the model is in a torsion pose.

This is a torsion pose where she's stretching her neck, moving, doing something active that makes her muscles show more than they would normally. This same woman would probably look more like the first sketch if she were at rest in profile, but her neck and chest are at 3/4 view while she's using those muscles to turn her head.

When you want to do an imaginary character, cartoon character or action drawing, get a friend to get into the pose even if your friend doesn't have exactly the build of the character. You can see from how your friend's body moves exactly what you need to do to make the character's pose become lively.

I hope this tutorial has helped you draw human necks more easily. The structures (with the exception of a prominent larynx) are pretty much the same in both sexes, though proportions will tend to vary by gender, they also vary by height, weight, age and individual proportion too. Sketch many different people's necks and you'll get used to knowing where to look for the obvious hollows, highlights and neck structures that are there in anyone.

Comments

grouch said

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on 1/26/2008 Great how to! My art teacher would always go by and holler look at those lovely lines. The swan neck of a dancer can be breath taking if you take your time.