Drawing Stick Figures - How Am I Made?

Drawing Stick Figures — How Am I Made?

In our last post we talked about basic proportions when drawing a stick figure, and I promised to offer some tips for making your stick figures more expressive.

Tip #1: Add two horizontal lines, one for the shoulders and one for the hips. If you think about how we are made, you quickly realize that the ‘hangman’ stick figure has a couple basic problems: our arms don’t spring out of our necks, and our legs don’t’ come together in an upside down ‘V.’

Instead we have shoulders and hips, so let’s add a simplified version of shoulders and hips to our stick figures. First imagine yourself standing straight up. Now picture a line from the tip of one shoulder to the tip of the other shoulder. Notice that your arms are attached to your body at either end of this line. Likewise, picture a line that runs from the tip of one hip bone to the tip of the other. Your legs extend straight down from the ends of this line.

Now add these two horizontal lines to your stick figure and attach the arms and legs to the ends of the appropriate line. Voila! With just these two new lines, your stick figure is a closer representation of you!

Tip #2: Notice the major points where we bend and move (our joints). Our stick figure is only a few simple lines (one for the neck and body, one for each arm, one for each leg, and now we have included the connector lines for the shoulders and hips). If we take the time to think about where these simple lines bend (shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles), then our stick figures are ready for action!

In the next post we’ll talk about how to make our stick figures move at our command.

To see other Drawing Stick Figures post, look here: How Tall Am I? and How Do I Move?

         
                                                                                               -Tracy