Don`t Make The Muscles The Focal Point Of Your Drawing

There are many tips and advice you can take onboard on how to improve your life drawing skills but today we are just focusing on one and that is not to place too much emphasis on muscles when drawing the human body.

Don`t Overemphasise The Anatomical Aspect

Muscles can add realism to a drawing but it shouldn`t be the first thing a person is drawn to when looking at your finished article. If you overemphasize the anatomical aspect of the body with the muscles it becomes a little bit clinical, what you should be trying to do is to convey what the person is doing or thinking, or give some indication of the persons personality through your drawing if possible.

If you can pull that off then viewers of the drawing will not simply be looking at parts of the body, but look at the figure as a whole person and be drawn into what they are doing, thinking and who they are etc.

Enhancing Movement With The Muscles

You can draw muscles on the body as a way of enhancing the movement that the person is involved with in the drawing, the muscles in the drawing should be a means to an end and not simply drawing attention to the muscles themselves. Creating a life drawing that is performing a gesture is actually a good way to start drawing a person, it gives you something to hang on to and to bring out.

You will find good examples of using muscles to express movement and power in comic books. The superhero`s and villains in these comic books often have well defined muscles, but they are used to convey the power, strength or speed of them, not just as muscles to look at. Many comic book illustrators are absolute masters of this so it is well worth checking some of them out to see how they pull this off so brilliantly. The volume and the shape of the muscles drawn lead your eyes through the figure to their point of action seamlessly.

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This of course is easier to explain than to put into action if you are a beginner but practice makes perfect as they say so I would recommend you take this tip on board when you are creating your next life drawing.

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