❖ Introduction
Do you ever wonder why your drawings look stiff? Why it looks good inside your head but the moment you try to draw it, it comes out awful?
Well, that’s mostly the result of poor compositions.
That’s why I’m here to teach you how to improve your full body drawings.
When drawing composition poses, I have three parts always in mind: Rough Structure, Flow, Poses.
❖ Rough Structure
When drawing a pose, I always try to draw the Head, Ribcage and the Pelvis first then draw the rest of the limbs after. These three parts serves as a base for the whole structure. My advice when thinking of a pose is just trust your instincts and don’t try to make it perfect at first try.
Sometimes the feeling of a pose matters more than its perfect anatomy, which brings us to the second part, Flow.
❖ Flow
The lack of flow on your drawings is one of the factors that makes a drawing look bad. Without flow your drawings can appear very stiff.
▷ Line of action
We have this thing called line of action, which is self-explanatory. It’s a line reference for your poses’ flow. This is a common practice artists make, to apply them into their own poses or drawings.
Try to imagine the pose in your head, after drawing that, try and draw a curve line that represents that pose. Usually around the spine. You can also look at references and see where to place those lines, do these enough times and you should get used to it.
❖ 3D Models
If drawing human anatomy seems scary to you then you don’t have to worry, even now I still struggle with anatomy. So, whenever I can I use 3D tools to help me.
Clip studio helps my drawings be faster and easier with this method.
On the top left of your workspace, select Window.
After that navigate the Material window.
Then select Body Type which is under 3D.
Just choose your preferred model and drag it onto your canvas.
For those who don’t know these settings they might seem scary but, let me just take a moment to explain them.
▷ 3D Movement
This button rotates both the background and the body around the canvas.
This one move both the body and the background, around the camera.
This one scales both the model and the background.
This button only moves the model around without the background.
This one rotates the model in two directions.
While this one rotates the model only on the X axis.
And this one only on the Z axis.
Lastly, this one places your model in any part of the plane you want.
Now that I’ve shown you the controls, we’re now gonna make our own pose.
To move body parts just select any part of the body you want to adjust and it will show a rotational axis to adjust it to your liking.
Just keep adjusting the pose until you’re satisfied.
And we’re done!!
If you’re too lazy to create a pose from scratch I have pose assets in clip studio paint that you can download for free.
It has a collection of 20 Dynamic and Static poses. Which brings us to our next topic, poses.
❖ Poses
Poses can be divided into two parts: Dynamic and Static.
❖ Dynamic vs. Static
First of all, I just want to clarify, Static poses don’t mean stiff poses. It just means rest, the lack of action. While dynamic poses are great at showing movement, static poses are just as great at showing stillness.
想象一下有波浪的水是动态姿势，而静止的水是静态姿势。
两者都有其自身特点，并且各有其特定的目的。
With that said let’s go ahead and drag our model into the canvas.
Look for the icon below that looks like a clip board.
Then proceed to use 3D pose material.
This will then show you a collection of poses you can use in your model, along with the presets you already downloaded.
We’ll just go ahead and find a pose to our liking, for now I’ll pick a dynamic pose for our model.
▷ Dynamic Poses
Whenever I think of a dynamic pose I try to draw it to look like the energy is already released and in full motion.
Doing it this way would create less confusion when looking at your drawings.
When drawing the flow of dynamic poses, I always consider the energy of the pose and the amount of flexibility that it needs to do that pose. Whether it be dancing or acrobatics even running. I always make their form bend to create the energy needed.
After that I just draw the clothes to go with the flow of the body to add that extra energy.
▷ Static Poses
We’ll just do the same for the static pose, just look for the clipboard, pose materials, and choose whichever pose suits you. I chose this sitting pose to represent the static pose.
Just as I said earlier, static pose is rest. When the pose is sitting, lying down, or simply standing that is considered a static pose. I try to imagine less movements for the limbs to imply that the motion is at rest.
I usually just place their hands at their waist or anywhere it can rest.
Just as I try to show energy in a dynamic pose, I try to conserve energy in this one.
Once I’m done, I’m going to add some touches and piece them together.
❖ Conclusion
Here are the end results I just added some border and a font behind them to make them look more graphic, here are both of them side by side.
As you can see Static or Dynamic, they make for pretty good compositions.
Applying all of the things discussed in this tips would enhance your overall composition making, so go ahead and try them into your own illustrations!!
Watch the video above if you want to learn more details.