Drawing bodies having the right proportions is often difficult for those just learning to illustrate people. But by looking at the diagram, notice the consistency in the proportions of some body parts. There are a few surprising tricks that you should notice.

STEP 2.

You can instantly find in this close up image of a portion of the previous diagram about what I mean. The upper arm length before the elbow is equal to the length of the forearm up to the wrist, and which is also equal to the upper torso length as seen in the image.

STEP 3.

On the lower area, notice that the thigh's length is also equal to the leg length, and is also equal to the total torso length. The foot length is also approximately as long as the forearm and upper arm length.

STEP 4.

Now that you got the hang of drawing the body proportions, you might be wondering about the hand. The hand is one of the most difficult parts of the human body to illustrate. But with a few tricks, you will learn how easy it is after all. The image beside is how we can start to draw/sketch the hand. We draw an hourglass shape with the other part a bit smaller than the lower. The smaller side will be your marker for the wrist width. While the other, the palm.

STEP 5.

Next, we connect the sides with somewhat elastic lines curving inward. This will form pretty much the base for the hand outline.

STEP 6.

What we have however is an incomplete base. There still needs to be another base for the thumb. Take a look at the diagram and you will see that we start by making an isosceles triangle, whose longer end marks the joint of the wrist, and the other end stopping about 2/3 of the way to the base of the four fingers

STEP 7.

Now that we have a pretty good picture of what the hand is looking like, we place circles as the markers for the joints. You will need these if you need to portray your character as thin or bony types.

STEP 8.

Next we refine the base for our final outline. We make curves to surround the finger lines (notice the thumb, how the sides seem to slope apart from each other as they reach the base, and how one side sits perfectly in the middle of the base of the triangle for the thumb). We also make a slight curve outward for the side of the palm near the base of the pinky finger up to the start of the wrist joint.

STEP 9.

Finally, when satisfied, we finalize the outline and erase those that we don't need to show. Congratulations you have just created a nicely-proportioned human hand.

STEP 10.

The foot is another matter, but fortunately it isn't as difficult as drawing the hand, but it does have it's challenges if you don't know the right proportions. So to guide you, refer to the image shown beside. You will notice it looks like a triangle with lots of intersections. Those circles are joint markers.

STEP 11.

We make the outline of the foot in such a way that we place arches along the critical sides of the triangle.

STEP 12.

When satisfied, erase all unnecessary lines and trace about a third of the outlines of the ankle ball/joint.

STEP 13.

Practice leads to good consistency. So keep trying until the guide embeds itself onto your brain until you don't need to make guidelines anymore to sketch. Congratulations for having completed this tutorial. :)