How To Draw A Girl

imgThere are a wide range of tutorials that can help you draw very specific girls and female characters from your favorite movies, TV shows, and comics, but few will try to give the tips and pointers you need to create your own character.

The goal for the girl you draw is to have her represent the style you like but not look like every other picture that’s floating out on the Internet. You want your character to stand out, so let’s get started building the right look for your new drawing.

Differing Body Types

It’s best to have an idea of the girl you want in your head before you pick up your pen or pencil and get started. While the face is often the focal point for many people when deciding what someone looks like, the body is a great place to start because body shape can make the face draw look off if it is too thin or wide.

The traditional names for body types are Ectomorph, Mesomorph, and Endomorph. The Ectomorph is your classic skinny person with a lean build and lean muscles. They typically have thing shoulders and small frames. The Mesomorph is your classic muscular build who is strong and thick. The Endomorph tends to be a squishier person who is rounder and gains both fat and muscle very easy, this is the “stocky” type of person.

With women, these body types are usually expressed with another set of terms that may help your drawing: banana, apple, pear, and hourglass.

The banana body shape (Ectomorph) is about the same size at the shoulders and buttocks with skinny arms and legs. This is the shape you want for skinny characters and is often used for teenagers.

The hourglass figure follows the banana by being the same width at the shoulders and butt, however these are usually broader than the banana and the character goes in at the waist. Rounding out the shoulders and butt and moving in toward the hips with a gentle slope will give your character a sexy look.

The apple and pear are both sides of the same coin in that they’re heavier at either the shoulders (apple) or the bottom (pear). Apple builds grow up to strong shoulders and chests and are typically used for strong, muscular characters. This body type often lacks curvature so it doesn’t have quite the same sexy feel.

The pear shape is rather popular for buxom characters because it allows for a lot of curves at the butt and, to not make the curves too drastic, usually requires a little bit of extra weight overall for the drawing, particularly the chest and arms.

The Female Face

The toughest and perhaps most important part of your character is their face. Here’s a quick step by step way to build your first lady’s face, with a few surprises along the way. First, grab yourself a pencil and a good eraser, then draw a circle. Now, faintly draw a curved line to separate the lower third of your circle. This line will be where the eyebrows of your character go when all is said and done.

Now, draw a line through the middle of your circle, bisecting the eyebrow line, and extend it down about a quarter inch below your circle. Measure the size of your circle’s lower-third and record it. Now, put your pencil at the bottom of the circle and move down the line the same distance that you just measured. Draw a small horizontal line here. That’s going to be the lower lip.

Now, the area you sectioned off, divide it into three and make more horizontal lines. Then add another line below all three. This bottom line is your jaw, trace a “U” shape from the bottom line back to your circle, then straighten out the lines a little to make the angle steeper.

Female faces aren’t as angular as men’s, so it’s okay to keep the angle shallow and not make the chin or cheeks pointy.

Draw your eyes slightly under the eyebrow line, placing them in the middle of each section. Now, below the eyes, move your pencil in and create a slim nose centered on the face. Fill in the details of the eyes, and draw them however you’d like, whether that’s realistic or the popular wide eyes of manga.

Above your eyes, add a small line for the eyelid and then draw a slightly larger (but still small) line for your eyebrows. Shade gently around the eyebrow line to give it a natural feel.

Return to the line for your lower lip and draw the lip using the line as its top. Above the line, draw your upper lip. Lips are essentially a horizontal line with two bumps, and the upper lip is slightly larger for most people.

Now, draw the neck from the sides of the chin and extend the neck down the full length of your large vertical line. Slope out the shoulders gently from your neck and round them out on the end.

The hair is entirely up to you! The easiest thing to do is draw tight circle around the full head and then add small triangles for bangs and areas where the hair flips out instead of in – this prevents you from having to draw ears which can be a tough thing to add.

Keep Breasts Believable

As there are different body types, there are different sizes and shapes for a girl’s breasts. Breasts should be realistic to the character’s size, shape and age.

Breasts are essentially a specialized fat so they will need to mirror the overall fat present in your character elsewhere. This means skinny characters with large breasts and plump characters with small breasts aren’t going to fit well with a realistic drawing.

The main concern you should have is with placement. The vertex of your character’s collarbone – that little area where it dips down near the middle of your neck, should give you a center point for the chest. Draw an “X” here and it will provide you with two lines to extend downward, these should cross through the middle of their respective breast.

Female breasts don’t have to be a big part of your drawing, they don’t even have to be any part, but they tend to get a lot of focus. You want to keep them believable and right for the body shape or it’ll throw off the entire piece.

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