Learning to Make Your Character Drawings Solid | Fundamentals - Loomis - Comics - Manga

Line and Color Quick Start Guide: https://www.thedrawingcodex.com/quick...

In this video I give some simple tactics for keeping your characters in proportion when drawing them from different angles.

Making sure that your drawings are solid or feel dimensional... especially when you are drawing them from strange angles is one of the biggest challenges.

There are a huge range of foundational concepts that will help you draw and maintain proportion in three dimensions! However studying them all is a long game... what I do in this video is discuss the key takeaways and top concepts that will help you apply those foundational principals right now.

The more you study the fundamentals the better your overall drawing will get obviously. But there are three key ideas that you can apply even if your perspective knowledge is still building:

1 - The first is the idea of the centre line... especially for figures and anything symmetrical. This is where we imagine and often draw in a line down the centre of our forms. This helps with the second idea -

2 - Which is Symmetry or Mirroring... Often the things we draw (like the figure) are symmetrical. and one of the main tasks you learn is to make sure that features and limbs feel like they are symmetrical in perspective... There are some simple ideas covered in this video which you can apply to better understand how to mirror or keep symmetry across forms which are in perspective or rotated away from us.

3 - The third is the simple idea of lining things up. Often the nature of symmetry means features such as eyes and ears are running along invisible lines that can be used to link them up. The same goes for features on opposite sides of the body... shoulders... hips... everything lines up in perspective and often the simple act of putting in guide lines will help you immensely to keep things solid.

These are aimed to be a quick guide or a simple version of fully understanding perspective. But often it's these simple tricks that you will use every day. And you can start using them right now to help your drawing feel solid.

Good Luck!


With most types of stylised types of art - There is often a mix of structure and perspective and technical drawing.... combined with symbols and abstract features.

Once you get good at blocking in proportion and posing with the Loomis Method you can use it to suit your own style.

It's just a tool you can use to help you draw cool stuff!

Happy Drawing!

Tim Mcburnie

Learn Drawing and Illustration from me: www.thedrawingcodex.com

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