Drawing the Human Figure
Senior 2 · Fine Arts
Drawing the Human Figure
Lesson 2 of 4
20 min
You cannot hold a tape measure against a person while you draw them. Artists solved this long ago by using a part of the body itself as the unit of measure. The easiest unit to see is the head. Once you know how many heads tall a person is, and where each body part falls on that scale, you can draw anyone, of any age, in proportion.
One head length is the distance from the top of the skull to the bottom of the chin. Do not include a hat or tall hair: measure the skull.
| Person | Approximate height in heads |
|---|---|
| Baby (1 year) | 4 |
| Young child (about 6 years) | 6 |
| Teenager (about 14 years, like most S2 students) | 7 |
| Adult (real average) | 7 to 7½ |
| Adult (artists' drawing scale) | 8 |
The younger the person, the bigger the head is compared with the body. That is why a small head on a short body makes a figure look older, and a big head makes it look younger. Cartoonists exaggerate this on purpose.
Many artists draw adults 8 heads tall even though most real adults are closer to 7½. An 8-head figure is easy to divide in half, and it looks slightly taller and more elegant.
Learn the lines as a list: 1 chin, 2 chest, 3 navel and elbows, 4 crotch and wrists (the halfway point), 5 fingertips and mid-thigh, 6 just below the knees, 7 mid-shin, 8 soles of the feet. The halfway point matters most: in an adult the body divides into two equal halves at the crotch, so the legs are as long as the head and body together.
Always keep your arm fully straight. If you bend the elbow, the pencil comes closer to your eye and every measurement changes.
Your paper is 29.7 cm tall (A4). You leave about 2.5 cm of space at the top and at the bottom, so the figure is 29.7 − 5 ≈ 24 cm tall. For an 8-head adult, one head = 24 ÷ 8 = 3 cm. Mark lines every 3 cm. The halfway point (crotch) is 4 heads down: 4 × 3 = 12 cm below the top of the head.
Uwase sights her classmate Mugisha and counts 7 heads. She wants a drawing with a head 3 cm long, so the whole figure will be 7 × 3 = 21 cm. His halfway point falls a little lower than 3½ heads: a teenager's legs are not yet quite half of the height.
Search for Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (about 1490), one of the most famous studies of proportion ever made. It is a pen-and-ink drawing of a man inside a circle and a square. Look for two facts that you can test on yourself: the arm span equals the height, which is why the man fits a square; and the crotch is at the middle of the body. Stretch your arms wide against a wall with a partner marking the tips, then compare with your height.
Tip
Memory hook: "1 chin, 2 chest, 3 navel, 4 halfway." In the exam, if you remember that the wrists reach the halfway point and the fingertips reach mid-thigh, you can place the arms correctly in any standing figure.
An adult figure drawn 8 heads tall is 32 cm high. How long is one head, and how far below the top of the head is the navel?
Solution: one head = 32 ÷ 8 = 4 cm. The navel is on line 3, so 3 × 4 = 12 cm below the top of the head.
A drawing of a 6-year-old child is 7 heads tall. What will a viewer think, and how would you fix it?
Solution: the child will look like a small teenager or adult because the head is too small for the body. Redraw at about 6 heads: make the head bigger, keeping the same total height.
Why must your arm stay straight when you sight with a pencil?
Solution: a straight arm keeps the pencil at the same distance from your eye, so every head you measure is the same size. Bending the arm changes the scale halfway through.
In an 8-head adult, which body landmark is at the halfway point, and which part of the arm reaches it?
Solution: the crotch is at the halfway point (line 4), and the wrists reach the same level.
Remember
Sources and credits
