Shaping & Shading Techniques for Drawing the Human Form

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Alaina, and I’m speaking on behalf of Expert Village. And I’m going to be giving you some art tips on how to do a good human form drawing. So here’s a finished drawing and in order to start you basically want to start with a shape, this is actually my shape, the person that was standing there for me and there’s a mirror behind her, that’s the reflection on this side. So you want to start with your shape, go proportion by starting with head and draw proportion 7 to 8 head lengths down will be where her feet end and you’re going to start filling in the body shape and start contouring the lines in and then you’re going to start shading. Go back and shading work on your person first before you start doing any of the details, even in your fingers and your face. You want to fill in the basic shape form first. Once you start shading, get as much as you can done before you do the rest of the area. And then once you’re finished with her, you start shading along the outside and she’ll start to pop off the page. If you start making some of the parts where she’s lighter, make some of the parts darker in the reflection and her hip will start to pop off the page where it’s darker. "