How to Draw Realistic People

Art is in its essence a vehicle for creating imaginary and exaggerated depictions of reality. It's easy to look at something in the objective world and turn it around or inside out on a sheet of paper or a canvas. Drawing realistic people takes more time, more sensitivity to what you're seeing, and more control of your hand-eye coordination, but the results can be well worth it.

Instructions

1. Observe people all around you. Spend time simply watching everyone with the eye of an artist. Look carefully at actual proportions of the body, such as how long the arms really are, where the eyes are in the head, how wide hips really are, and so on.

2. Get a sketch pad and begin a daily routine of making rapid seconds-long sketches of people as they move around you. If you have a DVD player, use that to your advantage by pausing a movie when a character is in a position that you want to draw. Then draw without fear.

3. Make mistakes. Allow yourself to make all the mistakes you need to during the first phase of your figure studies. You have to draw sketches like these a lot before you will begin to feel comfortable with the way the human figure looks.

4. Figure out set proportions that you can use with every figure you draw. For example, the average adult body is seven heads tall. That means that, whatever the length of a person's head from crown to chin, that person's body is seven times that length.

5. Memorize other such proportions: when the arm is relaxed at the sides, the fingertips reach the middle of the thigh; also with the arms at the sides, the elbow is in line with the belly button; the nipples lie on a forty-five degree angle from vertical center of the chest; and there are many more.

Tips & Warnings

• Observe people around you closely. Come up with your own proportional guidelines. The ones suggested here are only for guidance. You may find others that work better for you. Be open and creative as you come up with these guides for yourself.