How to Draw Life-Like People
Drawing life-like people can be one of the most difficult challenges for beginning art students. Creating a person who looks realistic isn't as difficult as it might seem. By using simple shapes to define the initial outline and shading to create depth and definition, you can draw realistic, detailed images of people that are hard to distinguish even from a photograph.
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Instructions
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Sketch the outline of the person lightly. Define the shape of the head. Use a basic oval or circle, depending upon whether the face will be more rounded or elongated. Sketch in the definition of the chin around the circle and add a pair of ears. Find the center of the face, and draw the basic shape of the nose, then sketch the eyes around the nose. Stick with basic shapes for all these features. You might, for instance, draw almond-shaped or round eyes.
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Sketch the body. Draw the person's neck, and work your way down. Keep in mind the overall body shape. Go ahead and draw the body without clothing until after you've finished defining the pose you want the person to hold. Use a reference photo to help you determine proportion. Draw lightly so you can erase to make changes.
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Sketch clothes on your person. Leave the light sketch of the body in place until you've fully drawn the outline of the outfit the person will be wearing. Erase any parts of the body that will be covered by the clothes, then color in the clothes using light and hard pressure to give the clothing texture.
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Add hair on the person. Use short, straight lines for straight hair, small rings drawn in layers to create curly hair or squiggly lines for wavy hair. Add as many layers of these elements as you need to achieve the desired thickness and length.
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Shade around the nose and eyes to create depth. This is one of the key elements to draw a realistic person. Shading around the cheek area helps bring bone structure to the forefront. Shading around the nose and eyes lifts the features from the paper to give the person realistic dimension. Erase your initial lines as you define the face. Use the tip of your finger to smudge your shade lines to remove some of the hard aspects of the pencil lines and to create smooth blending.
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