You’ve probably been there. You grab a pencil, feel a sudden burst of inspiration, and try to sketch your friend or a cool character you saw online. Ten minutes later, you’re staring at something that looks less like a human and more like a collection of lumpy sausages glued to a balloon. It’s frustrating. Honestly, how to draw people is one of the steepest mountains any artist has to climb, mostly because our brains are hardwired to recognize faces and bodies so perfectly that even a tiny mistake looks "uncanny" or just plain wrong.
We spend our whole lives looking at humans. You’d think we’d be experts at drawing them. But the brain is a bit of a liar. It likes to simplify things into symbols—circles for eyes, a triangle for a nose—and when you draw those symbols instead of what’s actually there, the drawing falls apart. To get better, you have to stop drawing what you think a person looks like and start seeing the underlying mechanics. It’s kinda like learning to drive a manual car; there’s a lot of jerky stalling at the start, but once you get the rhythm of the clutch and the gears, it becomes second nature.
The Loomis Method and Why Your Proportions Are Off
If you’ve spent any time in art school or lurking on "Art YouTube," you’ve heard of Andrew Loomis. His 1943 book, Figure Drawing for All It's Worth, is basically the Bible for anyone trying to figure out how to draw people with some sense of realism. The big secret? It’s all about the "eight heads" rule.
Most people draw the head too big and the legs too short. It’s a classic rookie mistake. In reality, the average adult is roughly 7 to 7.5 "heads" tall, but fashion illustrators and comic book artists often push it to 8 or even 9 to make characters look more heroic or elegant. If you want your drawings to look grounded, start by marking out eight equal sections on your paper. The pelvis—the literal center of gravity—should sit right around the four-head mark. If you put it too high, your person looks like they’re all legs; too low, and they look like they’re crouching.
But wait. Real people aren't perfect cylinders or boxes.
We have curves. We have fat deposits. We have weird bony bits that stick out. The "Loomis Method" isn't just about height; it’s about the "crane" of the neck and the tilt of the pelvis. When a person stands, they rarely stand perfectly straight. They shift their weight. This is called contrapposto. It’s a fancy Italian word that basically means "counterpose." If the shoulders tilt one way, the hips usually tilt the other way to keep the body balanced. If you don't include that tilt, your drawing will look like a stiff wooden mannequin. Nobody wants that.
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Stop Drawing "Outlines" and Start Drawing Volumes
One of the biggest hurdles is the "coloring book" habit. You know the one. You draw a dark, heavy outline of a person and then try to fill it in. Real life doesn't have outlines. If you look at a person standing in front of a window, you see edges created by light and shadow, not a black sharpie line.
Think in 3D. Instead of drawing a flat arm, draw a cylinder. Instead of a flat torso, draw a boxy ribcage and a bowl-shaped pelvis. When you start thinking in volumes, you can rotate the person in your mind. This is what pros call "construction." It’s the skeleton of your drawing. If the construction is solid, the muscles and clothes you layer on top will look like they actually belong there.
I remember watching a masterclass by Glen Vilppu, a legendary animator who worked for Disney and Marvel. He always said, "No lines, only surfaces." He’d start with these loose, "gestural" loops that looked like nothing at first. But those loops captured the movement. Movement is the soul of the drawing. If you spend three hours rendering a perfectly shaded bicep but the pose is stiff, the drawing is still going to feel dead. Spend ten minutes on the gesture and two hours on the detail, not the other way around.
The Terror of Drawing Hands and Feet
Let’s be real: hands are the worst.
Even some of the most famous painters in history used to hide hands in pockets or behind backs because they’re a nightmare to get right. A hand has 27 bones. That’s a lot of moving parts. The trick to how to draw people without butchering the hands is to simplify them into a "mitten" shape first. Don't worry about individual fingers yet. Just get the wedge of the palm and the general direction of the thumb.
- Draw the palm as a square-ish shovel.
- Add a triangle for the thumb base.
- Group the four fingers into one solid block.
- Only then, break that block into individual digits.
Feet are similar. Think of them as a wedge or a triangular block. The ankle isn't symmetrical either—the inner ankle bone (the medial malleolus) is higher than the outer one (the lateral malleolus). Knowing these little anatomical "tells" is what separates a beginner from someone who actually knows what they’re doing. It’s these tiny, specific details that convince the viewer's brain that they’re looking at a real human being.
Lighting: The Secret Ingredient to Realism
You can have perfect proportions, but if your lighting is flat, your drawing will look flat. This is where "value" comes in. Value is just a fancy word for how light or dark something is.
Most beginners are scared of dark shadows. They use a light gray pencil and just barely smudge it. Don't do that. You need contrast. Look for the "core shadow"—the darkest part of the object where the light can't reach—and the "reflected light" which bounces off the floor and back onto the shadow side.
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If you're drawing a person, the underside of the chin, the armpits, and the area behind the knees are usually the darkest spots. By pushing your darks, you create "form." You make the person pop off the page. Use a soft lead pencil like a 4B or 6B for this. If you’re using a standard No. 2 pencil from a junk drawer, you’re basically fighting with one hand tied behind your back. It’s too hard and won't give you the deep blacks you need.
The Psychology of the Face
We are obsessed with faces. It’s why we see "Jesus in a piece of toast." Because of this obsession, we tend to over-emphasize features. We draw eyes way too big because they are the most important part of communication. But eyes are actually situated right in the middle of the head.
Wait, really?
Yeah. Most people think the eyes are near the top, but if you measure from the chin to the top of the skull, the eyes sit almost exactly on the halfway line. The top half of the head is mostly forehead and hair. If you place the eyes too high, your person will look like they have no brain space. It sounds weird until you actually try it.
Also, ears. They usually line up between the eyebrows and the bottom of the nose. If you’re drawing someone from the side, the ear is actually quite far back, almost in the center of the side of the head. It feels wrong when you're doing it, but it looks right when you're finished.
Foreshortening: Making the Leap to 3D
Foreshortening is the final boss of how to draw people. It’s what happens when someone points a finger directly at the "camera" or kicks a leg out toward the viewer. The limb looks shorter and wider than it actually is.
This is where your brain will try to sabotage you again. Your brain knows an arm is long, so it wants to draw it long. But if the arm is coming at you, you might only see a circle (the shoulder), another circle (the elbow), and a large shape (the hand). The arm effectively disappears.
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The best way to practice this is "The Coil Method." Imagine the arm is a Slinky. If the Slinky is stretched out, you see the whole thing. If it's pointed at you, the rings overlap. Draw those overlapping rings to map out the limb’s path through space. It’s a literal game-changer for dynamic poses.
Practical Steps to Improve Your Skills
It’s one thing to read about drawing; it’s another to actually do it. If you want to get good, you need a mix of "study" and "play."
- Do 30-second gesture drawings. Go to a site like Line-of-Action or Quickposes. Set the timer to 30 seconds. Try to capture the "energy" of the pose without drawing any details. No faces, no fingers, just the curve of the spine and the tilt of the limbs. Do this for 20 minutes a day. It’s like cardio for artists.
- Carry a sketchbook everywhere. Seriously. Go to a coffee shop or a park. Draw the person waiting for their latte. Don't worry about making it look "good." Just try to capture the way they’re slouching or how their clothes fold over their knees.
- Study anatomy, but don't get buried in it. You don't need to know the name of every single tendon in the hand, but knowing that the "bicep" and "tricep" work in opposition helps you understand why an arm looks different when it's bent versus straight.
- Master the "Box" and "Cylinder." If you can draw a box in perspective, you can draw a torso. If you can draw a cylinder, you can draw a leg. Spend some time just drawing shapes in 3D. It feels boring, but it’s the foundation of everything.
- Use references. There is a weird myth that "real" artists draw from their heads. They don't. Even the masters used models. If you’re stuck on a pose, take a photo of yourself in a mirror. Use it. It’s not cheating; it’s gathering data.
Drawing people is a marathon. You’re going to have days where everything you draw looks like a car crash. That’s fine. Every bad drawing is just one you had to get out of your system to reach the good ones. Keep the lines loose, keep your eyes open, and stop overthinking the "rules." Eventually, the hand starts to follow what the eye actually sees, and that’s when the magic happens.
Grab a heavy-weight paper—something like 100gsm or higher—so your eraser doesn't tear through the page when you inevitably have to fix those wonky eyes for the fifth time. Use a range of pencils (HB for sketching, 4B for shading) to give your work depth. Most importantly, look at people as a collection of shapes and light, not as a "person." When you lose the label, you find the form. Keep sketching, and don't let a few bad drawings stop the momentum. Professional artists are just amateurs who didn't quit when things got messy.