CaseStudy - Foreshorten Expres

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Patient Question:
If you guys still help artist get better with what they need help with, I need help with doing foreshortening and face expressions....I do anime kinda stuff so yeah, I would be really happy if you are willing to help.


Staff Advice:


To learn to how to foreshorten, my advice is to gesture draw photos (especially action photos) that show strong foreshortening. After you do a few hundred messy sketches of the reference photos, you'll start to get a "feel" for foreshortening. The important thing is not to be afraid of making mistakes or making a lot of ugly drawings to start with, because that's the best way to learn (IMHO).

A good resource for such photos is this book:
***** People and Poses by Buddy Scalera
-This title has a few hundred high-quality photos of both male and female models in various typical comic book poses -- fighting, standing, wounded, etc -- plus a CD in the back cover with 600+ additional photos. It contains no nudity, just tight shorts and (for the women) tank tops.

It includes dynamic foreshorted poses since those are popular in comics.

If you have a digital camera and a friend or sibling willing to be photographer (or model), you can make your own foreshortening reference photos too.

As for facial expressions: I'm still struggling with those myself. But based on my own experience, my advice is (take it or leave it, another approach may well work better for you): Get comfortable with drawing the human head first, and then work on expressions. The reason: if the head looks wrong, it'll distract from even the best done expressions. And since the features are what make the expressions, it's helpful to be able to draw them well.

To get good with heads and features...

1) Check this tutorial (ignore the bit about girly magazines tho):

***** Drawing the Human Head Tutorial by Brian Stelfreeze (hosted by Will Terrell)
-Not so much a step-by-step tutorial as a unique approach to drawing the human head which also works for just about any art/anatomy subject. Get used to going through paper like butter with this one.

2) One approach that really improved my drawings of the head and facial features was this: I asked my sister to model for me, and walked all the way around her, taking portrait photos from slightly different angles until I had a full 360-degree range of photos of her head. Then I did the same thing up and around her head, starting from below her chin, going over her head (so the camera was shooting straight down), and ending at the back of her neck.

Since I used a digital camera, I was able to load the pictures onto my computer and gesture draw off of them. Seeing and drawing her head from all those different angles helped me to understand why features look so different from different viewpoints, and my portrait drawings have improved as a result.

Once you have a fair grasp of the head and features, you're then more free to play around with expressions because you're no longer struggling with basic facial structure. I recommend this book: **** The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression by Gary Faigin -An in-depth study of human expressions and how to draw them effectively. It goes into a lot of detail on bones and muscles, so it may be a little heavy for beginners.

You can also try this book:
How to Draw Anime and Manga Characters Volume 2: Expressing Emotions by Tadashi Ozawa

I hope that helps. I know it probably sounds like a lot of work... but it's definately do-able. There's no mystery to improving, you just need a little instruction and then lots of practice.

Keep creating!



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