Learning to edit the form you’re drawing relies on a bedrock of understanding anatomy. But if you understand its complexity through deep observation, you develop the tools to simplify and create visual shorthand. Capturing the intricacies of its shape is a challenge, one that many people spend a lifetime attempting to master.
This architecture is the basis for movement and gives life to drawings. When you draw a figure, identify the foundational shapes of the muscles that lie underneath the skin and the bones that are underneath the muscles. When you learn the unique aspects of each of these features, your drawings become more complex and interesting. It’s composed of many different shapes: the lines of the bone structure and the fingers, the ovals and cylinders that compose the fingers and the palm. “Always have some type of roundedness to them.” Humans are rarely perfectly symmetrical or proportioned, so drawings that create those symmetries and proportions can seem uncanny or odd. “Avoid straight lines,” says illustrator Shiela Larson. To strive for perfection can leave your drawings feeling static and uninspired. While drawing figures can help you more accurately draw human anatomy, perfection is not the ultimate goal.
It might sound basic, but learning to manipulate these shapes is essential for figure drawing and other forms of drawing too.
Train your eye as an illustrator to discover how to replicate foundational shapes: the line, the oval, the square.