Learn how to draw people: Mistakes to learn from

 In this hub I will be showcasing some of my mistakes and hiccups I made in drawing manga anatomy, and these mistakes were highlighted by my manga comic teacher.

This is to allow readers to know what mistakes to avoid and how to better improve on drawing realistic people for manga comics.

Anyway, if anyone wants to begin learning how to draw people for manga comics or webcomics, please start with the “Drawing outline of human body” series, and begin from part 1 onwards, because in the series we discuss about the fundamentals of drawing manga males and females 

As my above training with my manga comic teacher was focusing on manga human anatomy, I was instructed not to spend much time on making the characters look great on their facial features and overall outlook, so please pardon the ugly facial features.

What is the most prominent mistake I made in the above doodle art? It was in both male characters’ poses.

This is one of the major mistakes I made in drawing manga male anatomy. Look at the legs at the above two male manga characters; they are two closed apart! No guy at any street would walk or pose with their legs so close to each other like a female’s.

I was pretty turned off by my own drawings after I completed the picture. Nevetheless, I submitted it to my manga teacher for advices and comments, and as it has good learning value, I kept the doodle art.

Mistake to learn from #1: Never draw male characters with their legs closed together, unless we are trying to draw a sissy.

Tip #1: To avoid the above mistake, my manga teacher advised me to observe how real people walk naturally. By making pointers of how they walk, the mannerisms and the poses, it will help in my drawing skills in drawing people.

If anyone read “Drawing outline of human body part 4: Adding muscles and flesh to stick figures“, you will understand that I did not draw the above male characters in one attempt.

Rather I did it in multiple stages: from drawing stick figures, to adding flesh and muscles to the stick figures, and lastly to add details to the outline of human body.

The above exercise helped to identify where did my mistake occur, which I am going to show it here:

As we can see above, even before I added details to my male characters, the outline of the human body already suggested that my poses are for females and not for males.

Therefore, it goes to show that my advanced stick figure drawings were not mastered well. If it was done well, the mistake would not be made.

Tip #2: Seek to master advanced stick drawings and their poses well.

As I have mentioned before, my friend who graduated with an arts degree, stated that they spent 1 whole year drawing stick figures as foundation.

Therefore stick figure drawings are not just for children to play with; it is used for artists to practice drawing human anatomy.

The mistakes that I made in the above doodle arts are not exhaustive; I merely picked out the prominent and important ones to highlight to readers.

For more information about the mistakes to learn from in learning how to draw people, visit my post at manga-journey.com.

Anyway, to reiterate, if any reader wants to learn to draw people, please start from the series of "Drawing outline of human body", as I documented my learning journey and experiences while learning how to draw manga people.

That's it for this post. Stay tuned for more updates!

This hub is edited and taken from my blog at http://manga-journey.com/ , where I blog about my journey experiences and learning curves of becoming a semi-professional manga comic artist through starting a webcomic.