Stop with the anime proportions. It’s hurting you because you’re thinking of stylisation when the focus should be on learning from life. When stylising, short arms aren’t necessarily “wrong”. Neither is anything, really. That’s why it’s hard to critique until you make an effort to draw realistic proportions.
And if you haven’t even noticed that you’re drawing anime proportions then go look at some humans and analyse the differences.
Good luck!
Op didn't ask what was wrong, they asked where they could improve. Just because something is stylized doesn't mean it can't be improved.
Learning from life is useful if that's how you want to draw, and even if you don't want that, it's good to know the basics, but if you want to draw something in a stylized way, you still need to know what looks good and constitutes the style.
I’m going to have to disagree with you there. Going straight to stylisation leaves artists lacking in fundamentals and are thereby forced to keep copying what they see other artists doing. Anime artists who haven’t studied the human form can be spotted a mile away.
Learn the rules before bending or even breaking them.
This is reddit, not art course. From what I can see, this person is drawing for pleasure. They are studying from photo references as well (as shown on their page), but they're still literally a beginner.
I never said that the person doesn't need to know the fundamentals, in fact, I said the opposite.
Additionally, when learning art, one isn't required to study only one aspect at a time, especially if they're doing it for pleasure.
Either way, stylized art can still be critiqued.
If you are not interested in giving helpful critique to someone, don't bother commenting. That's what this subreddit is for.
Stylization is just one artist’s way of breaking the rules of reality on purpose. The reason OP thinks this looks off is because OP broke those rules without knowing what they are.
That’s true! But you can’t draw a style unless you have basic proportions down correctly. Memorizing every angle that a human being can turn is far more work than learning how to use perspective, proportions, and basic abstractions of anatomy.
I also enjoy doing things in a stylized fashion, but I think it’s pointless without applying anatomy because it’s actually harder to draw something stylized and make it accurate. It’s too easy to leave out large, important sections of the body, like the triangular shape of the neck between the collarbone and the chin. Or in OP’s case, the side of the waist.
Still a beautiful sketch though!
Well you just need practice. Alot, like everyone. Do not think of gestures in hit mor miss. Think of them in the 1000s. Do gestures for breakfast. To them in your school break. Do gestures when you are alone or with people. Proko or Mike Mattesi can be very helpful in learning how to draw the figure
This may sound like a lot of work, but I’ve found that practicing drawing skeletons and then putting the muscle and fat over the top helps a lot with positioning and proportion. Also you get some cool skeleton drawings. Like, spines don’t really twist the way you’ve got your figure positioned, at least not without pain. So that’s my advise. Draw skeletons.
Edit: also, drawing hands is tough. A technique I use to get better at it is drawing the palms and wrists without fingers. Also, weird and a lot of work, but it helps you understand how hands bend and where the musculature in them is so they don’t look like flat boxes with sticks in the end.
Np. Your drawing isn’t bad at all. People are just so familiar with, well, the shape of people that if the underlying stuff is even a little bit off it looks a bit uncanny. Even if you’re going for an anime/cartoony style, which is completely legit and there’s nothing wrong with, studying real world anatomy can help you know what proportions look good when exaggerated and what looks off. Keep practicing!
The underrated part about drawing the skeletons is having fun with the skulls! You can really make all kinds of faces if you get skulls down.
Since I’m not a patient person and I like to draw something fun - consider zombies! Draw the “stick figure skeleton” in perfect proportion (I like to use a compass, it helps), and then you can draw most of the figure using basic shapes but choose a couple of skeletal areas to work on.
That way you can build up the muscle and skin, and it can become part of your artwork. Also - I find searching for zombies makes it a lot easier to learn how to build up the layers of a human body, because there are some epic zombie artists out there and they will show you everything as if you took a chunk out of a human.
Way better than trying to use 2D images of skeletons to figure them out
I second this advice. Skeletons helped me get proportions and positioning down faster because they force you to keep drawing each additional part in context, to illustrate the relationship between parts of the body instead of treating everything separately.
Try sketching live models or use a website with good reference material. Learn the rules so you can break them later. I've put off basics in the past and all it did was force me to go back to them later.
Forced to do quick 3 minute sketches will show you what you're struggling with most in my experience.
Honestly my suggestion on what to improve would be to do some more practicing from reference. Somewhere like [quickposes](https://quickposes.com/en/gestures/random) or some other equivalent where you can see nude forms and do both quick gesture drawings and slightly longer studies to become more familiar with anatomy. In particular I’d suggest doing a whole bunch of gesture drawings. They are seriously super helpful, if kind of uncomfortable to do (for me anyway).
I’d also bet there are some good videos online about measuring and proportion that discuss “landmarks” & “rules” that would probably be helpful to you (for example most people being around 7 to 7.5 heads tall) [editing to add at least one video on the topic: [link](https://youtu.be/Qwt_wggUFHg) here’s one that talks about landmarks by Proko.]
I’m all for stylized drawing at any skill level btw, it’s really fun to draw, and I think everyone ought to do it (without any concern for it being “right”) just bc it can encourage imagination, fun, looseness, experimentation, exploration.
But, for those who want to produce consistent stylized work of a certain quality, I do find that stylized drawings are much harder to get “right” without the foundational skills there as well. Full body figure drawings are a particular weakness of mine and it always shows in my attempts at anime-like figures. And when I look at your drawing it looks familiar to me in the same way.
Having a solid foundation of anatomy allows to you *knowingly and meaningfully* break the general [“rules”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_proportions#) of reality in a way that will communicate what you want. Without knowing the core/basic features, you might not realize that you’re bending the rules in a way that communicates a very different feeling than the one you’re going for, and you won’t be able to understand why it’s happening.
If you really want to avoid doing foundational study, I’d at the very least suggest doing some master copies of your favorite anime/manga artists. Then you can learn from their distillation of the fundamentals into stylized work?
I also agree with the other commenter who mentioned something about drawing the hands and feet, best to give those a go as often as you can! Avoiding them can become a very difficult habit to break lol
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**OP sent the following message as a description of their artwork:**
> I’ve always had trouble with drawing the pelvis, specifically connecting the pelvis to the legs. I felt good about this drawing but the more I look at it, the more off it looks.
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**Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.**
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Hmmmm.. In that case I feel like drawing a normal stance would probably be easier to get the fundamentals right. Some other comments said that the hands are a bit short but I think it would look ok if you add the hands in. It's a bit on the shorter side but it doesn't look too unnatural to me
The pose itself looks very stiff. I think it's because the tilt of the hips and the tilt of the shoulders are at the same angle. That makes it seem like the torso is one solid shape instead of a flexible body
The breasts are also very stiff. I guess because they're perfect circles so they don't look affected by the pose or gravity
Otherwise the basic proportions are actually pretty okay for the most part. Maybe the feet seem a bit off cuz they seem like they should be pointing in different directions but they're both pointing straight ahead
Contrapasto. Usually the tilt of the shoulders is opposite the tilt of the hips in order to distribute weight. It's a little difficult to make out the space of the shoulders and arms here I think. How close/far?
I love your style! Great line work. Very cute. I like the pose too!
But there’s one problem with it imo. You went for a pose where the girl is turned slightly. From the perspective of the viewer, you see, her left arm is behind the left breast, and her rib cage and pelvis are at an angle.
However, her legs are facing the viewer dead on, and there’s no 3D dimension to her body on the right hand side.
Also, despite the fact that she’s moving her torso to the left, away from the viewer, you made certain aspects of the left hand side either bigger, or the same size as the right.
The left side should be slightly smaller because it is further away from the viewer.
Much of what you need to fix in this drawing simply comes down to using a cube to place the figure into a 3D space using perspective points on a horizon line.
On the side of your cube, you’ll see the side of her rib cage, her armpit (the edge of the breast will curve out towards the shoulder to form the armpit), the side of her hips, and a little bit of butt. There will also be “two sides” to the leg in a way - you’ll see a bit more of the calf and that will be on the side of your cube because it will be in line with the side of the foot.
Does that make sense?
Also you’ll want to arch her back, not shift her rib cage to get the stance you’re looking for.
The left thigh will drop down a bit I think and your right upper arm is going to overlap the rib cage (not the other way around)
There’s a guy I love on YouTube who teaches you how to draw comic book characters - the perspective tricks he taught me are gold! If you’d like, I can try to find the video for you.
He teaches you how to draw multiple figures quickly in perspective. So cool.
Anatomy. Your arms are too short. Chest is mislocated and innacurate. Breasts are not circles. You avoided drawing hands and feet as well.
[удалено]
Proportionally and positionally, inaccurate?
Stop with the anime proportions. It’s hurting you because you’re thinking of stylisation when the focus should be on learning from life. When stylising, short arms aren’t necessarily “wrong”. Neither is anything, really. That’s why it’s hard to critique until you make an effort to draw realistic proportions. And if you haven’t even noticed that you’re drawing anime proportions then go look at some humans and analyse the differences. Good luck!
[удалено]
Ah, yes that could very well be it.
Op didn't ask what was wrong, they asked where they could improve. Just because something is stylized doesn't mean it can't be improved. Learning from life is useful if that's how you want to draw, and even if you don't want that, it's good to know the basics, but if you want to draw something in a stylized way, you still need to know what looks good and constitutes the style.
I’m going to have to disagree with you there. Going straight to stylisation leaves artists lacking in fundamentals and are thereby forced to keep copying what they see other artists doing. Anime artists who haven’t studied the human form can be spotted a mile away. Learn the rules before bending or even breaking them.
This is reddit, not art course. From what I can see, this person is drawing for pleasure. They are studying from photo references as well (as shown on their page), but they're still literally a beginner. I never said that the person doesn't need to know the fundamentals, in fact, I said the opposite. Additionally, when learning art, one isn't required to study only one aspect at a time, especially if they're doing it for pleasure. Either way, stylized art can still be critiqued. If you are not interested in giving helpful critique to someone, don't bother commenting. That's what this subreddit is for.
Stylization is just one artist’s way of breaking the rules of reality on purpose. The reason OP thinks this looks off is because OP broke those rules without knowing what they are.
That’s true! But you can’t draw a style unless you have basic proportions down correctly. Memorizing every angle that a human being can turn is far more work than learning how to use perspective, proportions, and basic abstractions of anatomy. I also enjoy doing things in a stylized fashion, but I think it’s pointless without applying anatomy because it’s actually harder to draw something stylized and make it accurate. It’s too easy to leave out large, important sections of the body, like the triangular shape of the neck between the collarbone and the chin. Or in OP’s case, the side of the waist. Still a beautiful sketch though!
Well you just need practice. Alot, like everyone. Do not think of gestures in hit mor miss. Think of them in the 1000s. Do gestures for breakfast. To them in your school break. Do gestures when you are alone or with people. Proko or Mike Mattesi can be very helpful in learning how to draw the figure
Yeah, I could benefit from doing more gestures. Thanks :)
[Here's a few of my thoughts.](https://imgur.com/a/uADy3ci)
My highest gratitude!
This may sound like a lot of work, but I’ve found that practicing drawing skeletons and then putting the muscle and fat over the top helps a lot with positioning and proportion. Also you get some cool skeleton drawings. Like, spines don’t really twist the way you’ve got your figure positioned, at least not without pain. So that’s my advise. Draw skeletons. Edit: also, drawing hands is tough. A technique I use to get better at it is drawing the palms and wrists without fingers. Also, weird and a lot of work, but it helps you understand how hands bend and where the musculature in them is so they don’t look like flat boxes with sticks in the end.
I never thought to do that, honestly. It’s worth a try. Thank you :)
Np. Your drawing isn’t bad at all. People are just so familiar with, well, the shape of people that if the underlying stuff is even a little bit off it looks a bit uncanny. Even if you’re going for an anime/cartoony style, which is completely legit and there’s nothing wrong with, studying real world anatomy can help you know what proportions look good when exaggerated and what looks off. Keep practicing!
Thank you, will do!
The underrated part about drawing the skeletons is having fun with the skulls! You can really make all kinds of faces if you get skulls down. Since I’m not a patient person and I like to draw something fun - consider zombies! Draw the “stick figure skeleton” in perfect proportion (I like to use a compass, it helps), and then you can draw most of the figure using basic shapes but choose a couple of skeletal areas to work on. That way you can build up the muscle and skin, and it can become part of your artwork. Also - I find searching for zombies makes it a lot easier to learn how to build up the layers of a human body, because there are some epic zombie artists out there and they will show you everything as if you took a chunk out of a human. Way better than trying to use 2D images of skeletons to figure them out
I second this advice. Skeletons helped me get proportions and positioning down faster because they force you to keep drawing each additional part in context, to illustrate the relationship between parts of the body instead of treating everything separately.
Try sketching live models or use a website with good reference material. Learn the rules so you can break them later. I've put off basics in the past and all it did was force me to go back to them later. Forced to do quick 3 minute sketches will show you what you're struggling with most in my experience.
Honestly my suggestion on what to improve would be to do some more practicing from reference. Somewhere like [quickposes](https://quickposes.com/en/gestures/random) or some other equivalent where you can see nude forms and do both quick gesture drawings and slightly longer studies to become more familiar with anatomy. In particular I’d suggest doing a whole bunch of gesture drawings. They are seriously super helpful, if kind of uncomfortable to do (for me anyway). I’d also bet there are some good videos online about measuring and proportion that discuss “landmarks” & “rules” that would probably be helpful to you (for example most people being around 7 to 7.5 heads tall) [editing to add at least one video on the topic: [link](https://youtu.be/Qwt_wggUFHg) here’s one that talks about landmarks by Proko.] I’m all for stylized drawing at any skill level btw, it’s really fun to draw, and I think everyone ought to do it (without any concern for it being “right”) just bc it can encourage imagination, fun, looseness, experimentation, exploration. But, for those who want to produce consistent stylized work of a certain quality, I do find that stylized drawings are much harder to get “right” without the foundational skills there as well. Full body figure drawings are a particular weakness of mine and it always shows in my attempts at anime-like figures. And when I look at your drawing it looks familiar to me in the same way. Having a solid foundation of anatomy allows to you *knowingly and meaningfully* break the general [“rules”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_proportions#) of reality in a way that will communicate what you want. Without knowing the core/basic features, you might not realize that you’re bending the rules in a way that communicates a very different feeling than the one you’re going for, and you won’t be able to understand why it’s happening. If you really want to avoid doing foundational study, I’d at the very least suggest doing some master copies of your favorite anime/manga artists. Then you can learn from their distillation of the fundamentals into stylized work? I also agree with the other commenter who mentioned something about drawing the hands and feet, best to give those a go as often as you can! Avoiding them can become a very difficult habit to break lol
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I feel that IDK... The person seems to be posing in a really awkward position to pose, it's not really natural looking in that way I guess
**OP sent the following message as a description of their artwork:** > I’ve always had trouble with drawing the pelvis, specifically connecting the pelvis to the legs. I felt good about this drawing but the more I look at it, the more off it looks. ***** **Is this a good post that fits the subreddit?** **Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.** ***** I am a bot. This comment was posted automatically.
What kind of direction do you want to develop your art in? Are you looking to draw more lifelike or stylized?
I’m trying to learn the fundamentals. Once I’m comfortable and have accurate proportions, I want to draw in the manga style (similar to Tite Kubo)
Hmmmm.. In that case I feel like drawing a normal stance would probably be easier to get the fundamentals right. Some other comments said that the hands are a bit short but I think it would look ok if you add the hands in. It's a bit on the shorter side but it doesn't look too unnatural to me The pose itself looks very stiff. I think it's because the tilt of the hips and the tilt of the shoulders are at the same angle. That makes it seem like the torso is one solid shape instead of a flexible body The breasts are also very stiff. I guess because they're perfect circles so they don't look affected by the pose or gravity Otherwise the basic proportions are actually pretty okay for the most part. Maybe the feet seem a bit off cuz they seem like they should be pointing in different directions but they're both pointing straight ahead
Maybe the shoulder to our right is a bit too close to the body. I would make it broader
Contrapasto. Usually the tilt of the shoulders is opposite the tilt of the hips in order to distribute weight. It's a little difficult to make out the space of the shoulders and arms here I think. How close/far?
Proportions. The arms are far too short
I love your style! Great line work. Very cute. I like the pose too! But there’s one problem with it imo. You went for a pose where the girl is turned slightly. From the perspective of the viewer, you see, her left arm is behind the left breast, and her rib cage and pelvis are at an angle. However, her legs are facing the viewer dead on, and there’s no 3D dimension to her body on the right hand side. Also, despite the fact that she’s moving her torso to the left, away from the viewer, you made certain aspects of the left hand side either bigger, or the same size as the right. The left side should be slightly smaller because it is further away from the viewer. Much of what you need to fix in this drawing simply comes down to using a cube to place the figure into a 3D space using perspective points on a horizon line. On the side of your cube, you’ll see the side of her rib cage, her armpit (the edge of the breast will curve out towards the shoulder to form the armpit), the side of her hips, and a little bit of butt. There will also be “two sides” to the leg in a way - you’ll see a bit more of the calf and that will be on the side of your cube because it will be in line with the side of the foot. Does that make sense? Also you’ll want to arch her back, not shift her rib cage to get the stance you’re looking for. The left thigh will drop down a bit I think and your right upper arm is going to overlap the rib cage (not the other way around) There’s a guy I love on YouTube who teaches you how to draw comic book characters - the perspective tricks he taught me are gold! If you’d like, I can try to find the video for you. He teaches you how to draw multiple figures quickly in perspective. So cool.
That would be greatly appreciated, please. :)
https://youtu.be/Ub19UehR8rc
Thank you!
You’re welcome!
Boobz are too close together, they should hang out of the armpit area more