drawing women who don't look like drag queens

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 12:13 am

this has been a problem I've had for as long as I can remember, and only recently have been trying to conquer those demons and make some progress.

anyway, I'm trying to draw effective females in action poses. these are sketches that weren't made from any pose references of any kind (I know they're not brilliant, but just thought I'd state that).

these are some of my more effective action poses. do they look right to you guys? any suggestions?

thanks

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 1:12 am

You're placing too much emphasis on the breasts. It looks like they're in a wet T-shirt contest or something. Fabric falls away from flesh. It doesn't cling. If the fabric is tight, it will squash and flatten soft flesh (like breasts). That's why you get cleavage. The breasts are being mushed together.

The same goes for the funky way the pants fold around the knees. Knees are more solid than breasts and tend to force fabric to conform to their shape. The inside of the knee bunches up fabric. The top of the knee, especially when bent at a sharp angle, removes folds from fabric. If the leg is straight, the fabric conforms more to the upper thighs than to the knees. Fabric is generally loose around the knees so the knees can bend easily.

Also, their heads are too large and their upper legs are too long. The upper and lower legs should be more similar in length, but not thickness.

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 1:22 am

thanks. points taken. I had a hunch the upper legs were too long on the bottom sketch, but I thought the top sketch might have been a bit closer to the mark.

as for heads, is that a firm rule? I kinda thought VERY slightly enlarged heads (they're nearly 8 heads tall, it's like 7.5 or more

and skinny legs kinda made a slightly cartoony, stylized look that might work. I obviously could be wrong. I'd like to hear anyone's feedback who has anything to say.

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 2:00 am

here, I actually went into photoshop real quick and made some slight adjustments per your advice. tell me if you think this is any good.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 10:14 am

The shirt is much improved.

I think she could stand for a thinner neck and shoulders as well.

That guy · Post by **That guy** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 12:21 pm

It's really not a bad pic, it's got a lot going for it - but I agree with Faub completely (he's a smarty). Rather than tinkering with that picture, make a new one... let the old go and the mistakes go with it.

The biggest reason she looks like a drag queen is that she has masculine shoulders and a thick neck. Those are the things guys in drag can't hide as easily. Fake breasts, a wig, etc... everything else is easy.

As for the head-size thing - it doesn't look like a style choice, it looks like a proportion error. IF she were cartoony and less detail-oriented, I might believe it was intentional - but right now it looks like you started big at the head and got smaller as you kept drawing. (Legs should be roughly twice the length of the torso from neck to waist - especially if you want to accentuate those femenine attributes.)

Linkara · Post by **Linkara** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 1:27 pm

Well, since I'm not as experienced an artist, I wouldn't know about how right or wrong it is, but I wil say that the reason why the second one looks kind of drag queen-ish is because the hair looks almost like a wig draped over her real hair.

...I could be wrong about that, though. ^^;; Anyone who reads Lightbringer can tell how much I know about drawing people...

Biev · Post by **Biev** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 2:54 pm

See, I don't think they look like drag queens at all. The boob lines is the only thing I have a problem with, especially in the first picture, but you fixed that. Clingy shirt or not, you'd have some shadow under the breasts, but not a clear line like that.

For me, the trick to proportioning heads is to draw the body first and the head last. I like to draw the heads pretty big, but if I'm not careful they may well come out huge.

Also, not keeping your head too close to the paper as you draw helps with proportions. You'll tend to get closer and closer as you add detail, so it's good to take a step back and see the whole picture. I have the bad habit of getting really close to the paper myself because a) I'm extremely near-sighted and b) I always start my drawings too small. I try to pull my head back everytime I add something to the picture, though.

Oh, and as a general guideline I try to make the shoulders about as wide as the hips (on girls, of course).

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 4:52 pm

we have a pretty good story idea for a serious graphic novel, so I've been trying to see if I can not only draw humans (my current comic is just goofy aliens), but draw them DOING things, and in a passable way.

thanks so much for the crits everyone. going to work on some more concepts later tonight, maybe I'll post something in here.

C.w. · Post by **C.w.** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 12:15 am

Perhaps this might help. It's a bit of a pain to look through due to the enormous amount of medical jargon though. - http://www.bartleby.com/107/ Sections II, III, IV and XII are where most of the good stuff for artists is, although the other sections are fairly nifty to look through. (yes, it's nearly a hundred years old. It's also free - for some reason anatomy references are hard to find on the internet if you don't care for the seedy side.)

All the bits and pieces work well, it's just how they're coming together that is the problem. Look at the hips in the first picture - they are sort of going one direction and the legs are going another? That's not a grand thing. Sort of looks like the legs are stuck on with glue or something. It all needs to flow together.

Try and remember that people are made of bones first, and then there are muscles on top of those, and skin on top of that. If the bones are wrong, the person is never going to look quite right. That goes for both females and males.

The last thing I'll suggest - Oh dear. I hate talking about the naughty bits. It's terribly awkward to say this, but - the... uhm... breasts? Forget about them - no one will generally fault you for giving a lady too small (save perhaps idiot misogynists), but if you tack on large ones they have a tendancy to... overwhelm. Besides which - in action poses where motion is taken into account they have their own unique physics (oh dear.. how painfully awkward it is to explain to someone why a person would need to observe breast physics), they react quite differently from average muscle and fat tissue, ect.

Besides, everyone in comics has big ones. Now if you'll excuse me, I feel that awkward dirtyness that comes from the subject.

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:45 am

not 100% sure what you mean about the hips, and I also am having some trouble making sense of these medical illustrations.. maybe I'm thick..

do you find the artwork flawed to the point of offensiveness? I'm realizing I'll never be perfect, I want to get to the point where it's somewhat effective htough.

thanks for the interesting write up.

RemusShepherd · Post by **RemusShepherd** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 9:01 am

Females have much wider and rounder hips than males. Because of that, they usually have their belts higher. The belts on your pictures are falling down. The way you've drawn them, those pants are probably glued on.

Female shoulders are narrower and slope more coming down from the neck. Although honestly I wouldn't worry too much -- your females are better than mine.

Where is that link to the Loomis books online? They really are the best guideline for sketching anatomy. I don't know of any tutorial that helps with sketching the clothes on top of the anatomy, which is really what is needed on areas like the knees and the breasts.

C.w. · Post by **C.w.** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 11:50 am

twotimingpete wrote:not 100% sure what you mean about the hips, and I also am having some trouble making sense of these medical illustrations.. maybe I'm thick..

That's because they are difficult to make sense of. It's not a general anatomy book for an artist, so instead of a general idea of the whole, it is very specific looks at specific parts - combine that with the medical nomenclature, and you get a book difficult for the artist to just flip through. It is useful in the fact that it seperates everything, so you can get a good idea of a certain part if you need to.

There's also Figure Drawing for All It's Worth by loomis (very good)(and others, but I hate navigating that site.) A Deviantart Tutorial (basic, but good, with nice little tricks) and maybe this, which is good, but like grey's is text heavy. (would have linked more like this is last post, but it was late and i was having trouble finding them.)

not 100% sure what you mean about the hips

They don't look (to me at least) like they are part of the same system - like you drew a gluteus maximus, and then added on thighs, when really they can be viewed as part of the same large muscle group.

do you find the artwork flawed to the point of offensiveness? I'm realizing I'll never be perfect, I want to get to the point where it's somewhat effective htough.

Sorry if I seem harsh - they are not horrid or offensive (they are actually fairly good). This is not something anyone nails in a few drawings. After about a million, things start looking great. Those first 999 999 drawings are a pain though.

Jesslynstormheart · Post by **Jesslynstormheart** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 12:22 pm

Actually, I think the second pic is more feminine than the first. The ears look a little big in the first pic. If it's an elf you could point them more. Making her neck and chin more narrow will make her look more feminine too. Here are some general things I keep in mind.

Females: Curved and rounded features in face and body, head more oval, narrow chin, narrow jawline, shoulders more narrow than hips, hips wider than a man's and a little more butt, waist smaller than hips and shoulders

Males: angular features in face and body, head more square, broad chin and jaw, lower brow and thicker eye brows than a woman's, shoulders wider than hips

I think with a few small adjustments your drawings will be where you want them. They look promissing.

Biev · Post by **Biev** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 2:35 pm

On a side note, the hip to shoulder ratio thing is more of a cartooning convention. If you look at a female model in a magazine (flipping through Victoria's Secret right now), her hips won't be wider than her shoulders. They actually get to about half of the shoulder, so just a tiny bit smaller.

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 4:08 pm

lots of useful stuff here. I thank you guys.

Hale · Post by **Hale** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:16 pm

Perspecive and anatomy are two difficult and DIFFERENT things to master. Whenever I try to flesh out a character anatomically, I usually draw that character in pretty standard and easy perspectives to try and get a feel for the body in 3 dimensional space. Afterewards it's usually much easier to draw them in more interesting positions.

There are tons of sites out there that teach both subjects, but I suggest you attempt to tackle anatomy before perspecive.

By the way, awesome comic, absolutely hillarious. I read your entire archive, bookmarked it and showed all 3 of my friends!

Christwriter · Post by **Christwriter** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:53 pm

Lemme give ya my two cents.

1. Women have curves. More specificially, women have hips, and in spite of all our efforts to the contrary, women have big hips. Why? The short version is because women carry babies and men don't. Women have hips that are designed to a) Carry Babies and b) expell them from the body with as little damage to either as possible. One of the visual cues for sex is the size of the hips. Men's shoulders are wider than their hips. Women's hips are about the same size as or larger than their shoulders, depending on how you draw them. Another way to remember it is that men have all their muscles on their arms and chest, while women have it all in thier legs and hips.

Also, attractive women are going to be less muscular appearing than men. That doesn't mean she shouldn't HAVE muscles, but they should be under a nice, soft layer of fat.

2. Proportionately, her pelvis is not only too narrow, it's too short. You measure out your proportions using the size of the character's head, from the top of her head to her chin. A good starting proprotion for humans is eight heads. Chin to mid-breast is a little over one head. breast to naval is one head. Naval to crotch is one head, crotch to knees is two, and knees to feet are two. Your navel-to-crotch measurement is about half a head.

3. The neck takes up one third of the shoulders. Otherwise it looks wrong. On a woman, it also curves. Google "Audry Hepburn" for an example of a good female neck. In fact, google "Audry Hepburn" for an example of a good female figure, peroid.

You've got a good frame work here. Just work on the details a little bit. Might I suggest "Drawing Cutting Edge Anatomy" by Christopher Hart? That's a great book that details all the little anatomical details people leave out.

CW

Hale · Post by **Hale** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 8:10 pm

christwriter wrote:Lemme give ya my two cents.
Might I suggest "Drawing Cutting Edge Anatomy" by Christopher Hart? That's a great book that details all the little anatomical details people leave out.

CW

iew, yuck, Hart. I have several of his books, but that guy knows nothing but slapstick cartoons. If you want a real anatomy book, try this one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/082301 ... 03?ie=UTF8

It has great perspectives on male and female figure drawing.

That guy · Post by **That guy** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 10:11 pm

CW addressed this, but I wanted to add a little:

twotimingpete wrote: do you find the artwork flawed to the point of offensiveness?

Not at all. You're actually quite a good artist, and trying something unfamiliar in front of a public eye. A lot of people try to draw sexy women and end up with detailed boobs and butts that contort onto misshapen bodies. The only things going against your women is that they're a bit butch and you're trying tricky, dynamic angles. There are a lot of great suggestions here, but don't forget that people are just being critical to help, not because you're horrible.