draw woman upper body

Drawing anatomy of woman or torso step by step sketching and rendering online lesson.
Drawing Female figure is an art form, it is very challenging to represent femininity, beauty and accuracy at the same time. I usually keep in mind their body language, gesture, and movement whenever I am sketch, drawing or painting woman figure. (unless I am doing a straight forward post model sheet which is not flattering way to represent the female form *though some people can pull it off real well*, but sometimes it is necessary to do so if you are making a 3D model base off of it.) Anyway, I believe drawing women should not be static, it should flow with curve, movement, and grace. To represent a female form well enough to capture the audiences, in sketching, drawing, and painting woman and girl alike is one of the most difficult thing every artist has to solve.

Woman upper body drawing

 

Below are step by step drawing instruction learn how to draw woman figure upper body. Step 1, On the figure I usually start with spine line then I will define the shoulder and hip. For female figure I believe it’s necessary to accentuate the “C” or “S” curve on her pose. In this case the spine line is “S” shape from her neck down to her waist. The first horizontal line represent the top of the head and the second is a shoulder line. Step 2, I start with the head shape and where it faces. Then I define the rough shoulder and torso shape. Step 3, I then roughly adding arms and how it position related to the body. Also I draw another horizontal line to indicate where the level of her breasts would be placed. Step 4, I go the refine her face, then both arms and neck roughly.

How to draw female figure upper body step 1

  

Step 5, I now can define her hair line and the rest of the head. Then I add both of her breasts (the horizontal line is where her nipples should line up or it levels the center of her breasts), the bottom of her breast should go below the line. Step 6, At this stage, I am going in to refine her face lightly. It look alright, so I go darker and try to figure out the overall value and render the rest of the face. Step 7, Since I got the value range from the face, now I can apply to the rest of the figure starting from the near by area and going downward to her chest. Step 8, Then I keep expanding the value downward to her right breast, and so on. Same here, keep spreading the value and try to maintain its consistency. Now I am rendering her stomach, belly button and both arms. And done!

drawing woman figure upper body

Note, look at image below, Check the rough sketch, I think I have everything I need in place. So now I am looking to add the light source onto the figure. On the right, the thumbnails show where I would place the dark shadow roughly if I have the light source coming from the frontal left of the screen.

drawing woman body shading