How To Ensure You Draw The Human Body In Lifelike Proportions

Life drawing is a very rewarding experience, but it can also be a rather frustrating experience if you don`t have any guidelines to go from. Drawing the human form is fascinating as no one person is the same. However you do need to ensure your drawing is in reasonable proportion so it looks to be an accurate portrayal of a life model.

Drawing Guidelines To Work From

As long as you are aware that the proportions are just guidelines to work from and not completely accurate, as no one system could be 100% accurate with humans, the following will be very useful to you. And don`t forget that there is no perfect proportion for a body, the beautiful things about the human body are often its imperfections!

7 Figure Drawing Proportion System

Here we are introducing you to the seven figure drawing proportion system, which is taken with the model in a standing position.

If you take the human body to be approximately 7.5 human heads tall,

Around 2 heads down, moving down from the top of the head, should be the nipple line where the nipples are situated.

Approximately 3 heads down from the top of the head should be where the belly button, or navel, is found.

About 4 heads down from the top you should be drawing the pubic bone just above the genitals of a male model.

You should take the pubic bone as a reference point to being about halfway down the human body.

The wrists on the drawing should line up with the upper leg bone.

And the elbows should line up with the belly button (navel).

As we mentioned earlier, the above is just a general reference guide and should not be taken as gospel, but a useful guide to framing your drawing. If you did all your drawings in all the exact same proportions they would look very robotic and dull if you laid them next to each other.

Use The System To Create Your Own Unique Life Like Drawing

But using the proportions above will generally help you to draw more accurate and lifelike human forms, which is what we are all striving for. You can then build around this to create your own unique, but lifelike drawing.

Finally, if you are looking to attend a life drawing class at Hens with Pens we are running them on a regular basis, so please give us a call for availability and more details on 0203 4883180.