Drawing outline of human body part 2a: General Female Anatomy

from aki-shou

Moving on from “Drawing outline of human body part 1: How to draw manga easily”, today we will discuss how to draw general female anatomy by adding flesh and muscle to the stickman.

I will post up male’s anatomy in another time, as human anatomy is a component of manga art that is most difficult to grasp.

Drawing outline of human body part 2a: General Female Anatomy

Today’s manga art sharing will cater even for beginners. I will try to make it as simple as possible.

This is a very simple example of one of my practices I had with my manga teacher when I started out. I was required to add flesh and a simple facial feature to my stickman drawing.

To see my previous post about my stickman sketches, please click here. By referring to the blog post., it will help to relate what I am going to share in this post.

Please compare the female stickman figure with the above body outline sketch.

Try to note every detail possible from looking at the female body outline sketch. Consider how the limbs are drawn and how the joints are emphasized. I will highlight more about limbs and other small details in future posts.

There are other details that we need to note in the above doodle sketch:

1. My scale isn’t accurate to a ruler, for I have used approximation to draw my scale. Why? That is because in drawing the proportion of a figure, you just need to use the height of the head as a rough gauge, and then map out the rest of parts of the body using the height of the head as the guide.
2. Do not be shy about drawing a manga girls chest or where you think it may be sensitive. We are drawing a person afterall, and if you are too shy, I recommend drawing animals as main characters to your manga comic instead.
3. If you notice, the thinnest part of the body for a slim manga girl is where the two triangles intersect. (Plump ones are excluded in this example.)
4. The centre of the chests of manga girls is at number 2 of the scale. The height of the chests is one head.
5. Do not combine the breasts! They are two separate entities. (I was initially rebuked by my manga teacher because of this.)
6. There is a little space right between the two legs and directly below the bottom-most triangle; it is marked with a circle. Keep the space there as we don’t want a manga mermaid instead of a manga girl.

Last but not least, just follow the given female body outline sketch to practise.

Other advices and tips

Understand that the above body outline of a female manga girl is still very primitive. It is not real looking enough to be used in manga comics yet.

So we are only practising with them; once we have attain a certain level of skill, we can proceed on with other kind of exercises.

However, at this point these are necessary practice exercises for everyone and especially beginners to familiarize. This is a list of what we need to be familiarize with:

1. The size and length of the different parts of the body in relation to each other.
2. The shape of the limbs, joints, and the overall shape of a good looking manga girl or lady.
3. The overall look and feel of a female manga body.

And soon, you will be able to draw more lively poses with good anatomy such as these:

And yes, the above is still more advance than what I have shared today.

I know it is still stick figure sketches, but please be patient; I took awhile to practise before drawing a full body scale with a good looking face.

So stick figure sketches for now.

Final words for this post

My manga teacher told me today that if a drawing doesn’t look very attractive, but has attractive proportions, attractive poses and portrays a very lively look, the manga comic will still captivate readers.

And she further said that if I am only good at drawing manga eyes, and not making characters look lively with good proportions and poses, I might as well just draw manga eyes for the rest of my life.

So what I am sharing today is really important.

Final note: It will be good if any reader that is wanting to learn, to try to draw the flesh and muscles for the male’s anatomy before I post it up. It will be interesting to compare and contrast our drawings.

Stay tuned for further updates!

This article is taken from my blog at http://manga-journey.com , where I blog about my experience and learning curve of becoming a manga comic artist