Once upon a time (nearly 2 years ago to the day) I posted 9 figure drawing lessons for kids (and adults if they want to join in) and people still come looking for them. You can find them all here. Please keep in mind that originally I was doing these real time and life was rather hectic. If you decide to work through them feel free to leave a comment or email me if you ahve any questions or just want to share:
Once you practice putting it all together in a sketched skeleton you can begin to add shape. Some artists sketch in circles and ovals for the belly, arms, hands, legs sop they have the general shape there before they add details. Other artists add the drawing right on top of the skeleton. It is up to you which you decide to use but I suggest you try doing it both ways.
Take a skeleton which is drawn VERY lightly–so you can easily erase it, and using light lines draw the general shapes . For instance a belly is sometimes rounded and other times more rectangular. Think of the drawings of children who are just starting to draw–often they will draw hands that are a circle with 5 6, 7 or 10 lines coming out. 
You want to think in terms of shapes in order to draw in this manner.
Take some time adding shape to your skeletons, try different shapes and see how they people turn out.
We will, God willing, be out of town next week but I will try to get the lesson posted anyway.
For this week we are going to review all that you have learned then next week I will explain how to develop that into a full drawing.
When beginning, consider the age of the person you are drawing–if you want a small child the head is bigger in proportion to the body than a teen or grown up.
Next consider where the joints will show be, draw a very light skeleton, using ovals for shoulders and hips, all at the angle they would naturally occur.
When laying out the face, remember that the eyes are at the center, not at the forehead, or the nose–unless you are trying to exaggerate to make a point (for instance, drawing an ogre you may want all the facial features squished towards the bottom half, or drawing an elf the face may get spread upwards.)
Also keep in mind that, in general, a face is 5 eyes wide at the ears, and 7 eyes tall. This will help you position the features on the face, even when you don’t have a face to look at when drawing.
Review what we have learned and practice making sketches for various people using skeletons.
This week, I would like you to review the previous weeks lessons and practice drawing skeletons in motion,
with faces.
Also, if you have drawings to post, please share them here.
Yes, I am busy, I have a commissioned watercolor (a large house portrait) that I would really like to et finished and shipped this week. When I am finished with it I will share the process I go through working on them–very different than my doodles. Hopefully I will be done before next week and able to get together a more detailed lesson.
I had planned to move in a different direction with this, teaching how to fill in the stick figure drawings, but something I noticed with the most recent batch of sketches changed my mind.
You all did a wonderful job drawing the heads and placing the the eyes and nose along the lines but I noticed something that I should have mentioned in that lesson which I will explain now.
First, remember to draw lightly when laying out the drawing, it will make life so much simpler down the road.
The facial features get laid out on the head similarly to how the body and joints are. Instead of using a “head” to measure we use the eye. A typical human face is 5 eyes wide (one eye wide between the two eyes and one on either side), the ears are directly even with the eyes and eyebrows. A closed mouth is one eye wide as is an average nose. An average smile is two eyes wide.
For measuring up and down you turn the eye sideways with an average of seven eyes tall. You have one eye at the midpoint, three up into the hair, and three below the midpoint–one eye down from the midpoint covering the nose two covering the mouth and chin.
This is why some people look odd–maybe their eyes are slightly bigger or smaller, the nose is wider or thinner. The same goes for drawing other life forms–an anime character has bigger eyes while an ogre is often drawn with an extra wide bridge of the nose and with the face scrunched towards the bottom of the head instead of even. A baby will have slightly larger eyes as well while an old man may have smaller more shrunken features.
Being able to draw an average face will help you draw more interesting ones.:) Also, as you practice you will find that you only have o draw little lines or a few notches to know where everything goes.
And so today I want you to practice laying out a face, and look around at real faces to see how Godd put thhe faces around you together. You will find that everyone is different but that there are similarities in many, also you will find that you can start to see better how to draw different faces if you learn to measure them using their own eyes.
The Hobbit
Dragon spell
