How to Draw Muscle Structure

Learning how to draw muscles is important to understand drawing people.

Like anything, learning how to draw requires knowledge of the fundamentals. Although the skeleton is an excellent place to begin, you also need to understand more about the precise shapes of the human body before you can successfully draw a person. To do this, you will need to learn what is underneath the skin. Only after you have learned the basics of human muscle structure will you be able to draw a realistic-looking person.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil
• Drawing paper
• Eraser

Instructions

1. Get a picture reference on the Internet or from a book. Try to find one that correctly displays all of the human muscles together. Go to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo! and do a search under their images categories. Search using terms like "muscle structure" or "human muscle system."

2. Study the reference. On your drawing paper begin to sketch the basic form of the person. Do this by drawing a line for every body part: one for the upper arms, lower arms, hands, neck, upper legs, lower legs, feet, torso and face. You should have what appears to be a stick figure on your page.

3. Start with any muscle by looking at your reference and carefully copying its basic shape. Follow its curves, and notice where it stops. (Does it stop at a point or lead into another muscle?) Continue around the body, sketching all the shapes of the muscles. Do not fill them in yet.

4. Go over them again, this time to shade. Follow the lines from the reference to show the construction of the muscles. They will appear to be made of multiple lines, and not one darkened area, so when you "shade," do so with quick pencil strokes instead of shading with the side of your lead and blending multiple parts of the muscle together.

References

• Google Images
• Yahoo!
• Bakaneko: Introduction to Drawing, Anatomy, and Anime Stylizing