How to Draw Children and Teens - Part 1 of 3

Hey , everyone in here and in this lesson , I'm going to be talking about uh how to draw kids and teenagers and their proportions .

So , to begin with though , I'm gonna start with an adult and for the purpose of this uh lesson , I'm gonna go with an adult male and I'm assuming you are already familiar with the uh adult male proportions .

If you're not um go check out uh this video on adult male proportions .

Uh I've made one on uh female adult female proportions as well .

So you can go uh check those out .

So we're gonna start with the adult male and that is an eight head proportion which is , you know , it's pretty ideal uh idealized rather um but it's easy to break down .

So I'm gonna start with that .

So I'm gonna start and you can follow along uh with the top and then the bottom .

So this is gonna be where our person is gonna fit inside and then all I have to do is go halfway and divide it in half and then divide it into quarters and then divide it into eights .

Mhm .

So now I'm gonna label these uh divisions so 12345678 .

Ok .

So for , uh , the first one , we're gonna do the adult male .

So that's gonna be , uh , 19 plus and then we'll do , uh , 15 to 18 .

And again , these are just rough estimates .

It's not that , you know , well , I'm doing a 15 year old .

They have to meet these proportions .

No .

Um , they may not .

Uh , and then we'll do , uh , 10 to 14 .

Uh But again , it , it , it's not about uh , you know , definitely meeting these .

It's just , this is a starting point .

Um OK .

And uh 5 to 9 and 2 to 4 and 0 to 1 .

All right .

So just gonna put some verticals in there as well .

Oops .

And let's start then with the head of the first one .

So a 19 and older adult male , we're gonna make him eight heads tall and for the width , it's going to be roughly 2.5 to 3 heads .

Let's make it three heads uh wide .

So it's gonna be pretty masculine and I'm gonna go , uh you know , divide this into uh three , the second head segment and then this is where the shoulder is gonna be .

So this is roughly how big uh the neck is and then we'll flesh it out further later on , but this is the width .

Um And as we get to the younger and younger ages , what's gonna happen is this distance is gonna shrink and this distance is gonna shrink .

Ok .

So now I have that head and uh from the other tutorial , you know that the crotch is at uh four heads down or another way of thinking of it is , it's just halfway from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet .

And so now what I can do is create box area for the torso and bring down some arms and the hands and about halfway , uh five heads down or 4.5 heads down .

That's where the hens end .

Um , or another way of thinking of it is mid thigh , uh , just above six heads down is the uh the knees .

And another way of thinking of it is you could just draw a straight line for the leg and then find the halfway point .

That's where the knees go and with the arms , same thing , you know , get the hands , but then just find uh halfway point of the arms and that's gonna be the elbow .

And in this proportion it's gonna land uh three heads down and that's also the navel .

So this is the rough proportion of the uh adult male .

And now let's go to the teenager .

So if this one is eight heads , the team is going to be seven or not 10 , but 15 to 18 , it's gonna be about 7.5 .

So we can't just conveniently stick it .

Uh One head here or one head here .

What we're gonna have to do is divide this top uh head in half and this uh second , head in half and then add the circle there .

And I can actually go ahead and put in the other head .

So , uh from this point , it's pretty easy .

You just can go .

OK .

So that's 7.5 .

This one's gonna be 765 and four .

So six , five , oops , five and four .

And again , keeping this very rough now in this um chart , all the heads are the same size .

Um But that's not exactly too scale because as you get older , your head does get bigger .

Um but this will work for proportion .

So it's not going to be a scale image where you can say uh how big is a baby and then look at this one and then compare it to that and say , OK , that's the size difference .

No , because um this is just based on heads uh and proportions .

It's not based .

Uh we're not dealing with , how do I say uh the scale ?

OK .

So now we have the heads in there and as I said , uh for each one , the neck is gonna get a bit shorter and it's gonna get a bit less wide and it's OK , really ?

To just sort of guess you don't have to uh rely on , you know , counting everything because that's not what you're gonna be doing necessarily when you're drawing anyway , you're gonna be looking at it and , you know , roughly getting in , uh , the information .

So , uh , something else you can think of instead of just , uh , thinking of , you know , how many heads is just what's in the middle .

So from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet , what's in the middle ?

And , uh , for , uh , the eight head guy , it's , uh , the crotch is in the middle , um , for the seven head guy , 7.5 head , uh , the crotch , it's , it's about the crotch as well .

So go from here to here and then find the middle , think .

Ok , it's around there .

Um , do the same thing going down .

What's the middle for the , uh , 10 to 14 year old ?

Again , it's gonna be about the crotch .

So I'm just , what I'm doing is I go from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet and I move up and down till I sort of feel , uh where the mid point is and I put that in and I've , I've covered this in a previous tutorial .

Uh , it's on , uh , measuring something like that , measuring angles or something .

And , uh , yeah , so there's that , um , ok , and then for this one , uh the middle is gonna be just above the crotch .

So let's find that maybe about here .

And for this one , it's gonna be in between the crotch and the belly button is the middle and here it's going to be just the belly button in the middle .

So just looking at this , if you , if you know that , ok , this is the , the navel and it's the middle , then it's not intense in the middle , that's the middle .

Um , then you can kind of guess .

Ok , well , then this is gonna be the body and then that's gonna be pretty small legs .

So really what happens ?

What's , what's one of the biggest difference is , is the width this way and that way , uh you know , from shoulder to shoulder , uh the amount of neck that shows but also um the size of the legs in proportion to the torso .

Uh when , when you're a baby , you have a much bigger torso compared to your legs or uh another way to think about it is much smaller legs compared to your torso .

But no matter how small your legs are , uh halfway from the top to the bottom is still gonna be where , where the knees go .

So there's always things like that that can help you uh with proportions .

OK .

So um I did this one should have done this one .

But anyway , we can do it in any order .

It's not important .

Um The other , the other thing is that with the adult male , you get this kind of let me change colors , you have this kind of a v shape going on and as uh that you get younger or not , you know , when you're drawing younger people , this V is less pronounced .

So here you can see it's kind of just straight uh up and down and it really only takes on that V shape for males .

And uh you know , after puberty it starts to form .

Uh So this gets a bit , you know , more at an angle rather than just straight up and down .

Ok .

So the other thing is that , uh I think we covered it that uh the hands generally end mid thigh .

Um But when you get younger , that distance shrinks .

So for the baby , it's not mid thigh , it's much uh higher than mid thigh .

But you could plot this and then it's still clo as , as you get older , it gets closer and closer to mid thigh until it's mid thigh .

And um it is even when you're uh you know , like five years old , your hands are pretty much uh mid thigh .

So OK , sent out for this guy just putting in this box shape , giving him a bit of a neck .

Um can just sort of put in the boxes anyway and it doesn't have to be perfect .

But when you get these boxes in , it gives you a relationship between the head and uh the torso .

So then I can get this in and this represents a torso and we're including uh you know , the hip .

So the pelvis is actually inside this big box shape .

It's not like the pelvis is somewhere here .

Uh You could break it down differently where you have like the ribs and then the pelvis , you could break it down like that .

Um But I'm not , I'm breaking it down so they're together and that's just for simplicity's sake .

So then you get in the head shape , you get in the torso shape , get in the legs .

So you just have to put lines going straight down , go halfway and you'll find the knees , halfway , find the knees and then put in the hand .

So it's around mid thigh , get the arms in and this is pretty much it like that's the main proportion .

And again , what's really important is to see this relationship between the head and the torso .

And if you can memorize the these shapes instead of necessarily uh how many heads tall , you know , uh the per the figure is , then you have to do a lot less calculation .

And if you can simplify it , it's really not that complicated .

You can start to just get a sense of like um the proportions and how big the head is .

So for instance , for a child , you can just start to think of it as OK , they have a really big head and a really uh small body in or not , not a very narrow body comp compare comparatively and their head is just about as wide uh as their shoulders is the the width and then their legs are really small .

So if you just have that in your head , you know , got a big head and not this small body .

It's just about as wide as it is , uh , as the head and got these little legs .

I get the hands in then it's like , ok , hey , I've got a child proportion and I didn't have to measure .

Right .

I'm just going with that feeling of , ok , it's about this , um , where this chart comes in handy though is if you're going for a specific age and you kind of want to know , um you know , how , how is a nine year old gonna look ?

It's like that somewhere around uh seven or six heads tall .

And this is for uh more realistic proportions in anime , you can have a seven headed adult and it might be fine .

Sometimes they have like 11 heads tall adults or crazy things .

Um and 7.5 is often considered an average uh for realistic proportions , whereas eight heads is , is very idealized .

So in the next lesson , I'm going to cover , I'm gonna flesh it out and cover , you know , actually drawing in the heads .