Unexplained problem drawing women

[corel]

All of my sketches always were of men and it seems as soon as i start to draw something of a woman like head,face or overall body pose - it starts to look really odd and not attractive as women should look. How can i fix this?

[Jie Kageshinzo]

Continue drawing women. Study women's pictures. I had the same problem too. Oddly enough, what eventually allowed me to draw convincing women was anime.

[The Pariano]

Drawing men, you get used to drawing harsh angles and shadows because males have such qualities, and it really doesn't matter how many lines you draw, it usually only increases the " manlyness" of them; but with females, one simple line too dark can make her look 20 years older, and too harsh an angle can take away all of her femininity. I have this problem as well and as Jie said, just draw more ladies!

[FLenG]

women have softer and rounder features, while men have sharp and muscular features.

It's all about laying down the curves on the female body.

Faces on female is the most important part, you don't wanna give them too much wrinkle (or any at all unless you want to feature them as old). Give them thick eyelashes and Nice eyebrows... and some sexy LIPS.

[Grief]

get one to pose for you, some don't bite.

[MarkHarchar]

When drawing women, think, organic, fluid, curving. Think men=angles. Woman=arcs.

[armando]

Show a picture of the problem you're having and you'll get better answers... possibly. "odd and not attractive" I guess you might be having a problem with proportion. Start by simplifying your shapes, everything should be turned into one specific simple shape, use ovals for as many things as possible for now. Look at your picture 2 dimensionally, for now. Make the head an oval, now put in the eyes as ovals and keep track of their placement within the head oval, and their size relation. Make the torso an oval, put in the thingies as ovals looking at their placement on the torso and their size relation. Do a couple of passes with simple frontal poses, and try to figure out specifically how your proportion and placement are off.

[Qitsune]

get one to pose for you, some don't bite.

And Grief prefers those who do.....:lifedrawing:

[Ashtonw]

It's okay if you can't draw women well, you can make up for it by giving them bigger boobs.

[Kagemusha22]

I'm not too great myself at this, or any drawing from my head, the poses can often turn out looking just plain weird. Though my way of tackling it is frequent lifedrawing and remebering techniques like drawing line skeletons to plan the pose and build it up from there (skeletal structure and common body shape), till you have a natural looking nude body. (That is posed in a perfectly plausible way...) Then put clothes on top after you've decided that it looks fine (and make sure the clothes react to how you've positioned the body).

As for how to draw women, as everyone else has said, think curves, more petite features, etc. (Best go to lifedrawing for that, observational drawings or anatomy books)

It's okay if you can't draw women well, you can make up for it by giving them bigger boobs.

Hahaha, that's pretty much what you see in most webcomics.

[Zaknafain]

In most cases when people say something like "I cant draw men / women" they dont really understand the nature of their problem.
From wikipedia:
An average adult male is made up of 40–50% of skeletal muscle and an average adult female is made up of 30–40% (as a percentage of body mass)
Apart from breats and genetalia, this is the only difference between man and women and in my experience its the most important difference.
When the muslces are less important, bones and bodyfat becomes more important.
I had the same problem for a while and drawing skeletons, and studying the bone structure in general helped me a lot. Also sketch lots of fat people get a better understanding of bodyfat.
Female sex hormone causes fat to be stored in the buttocks, thighs, and hips in women.[9][10] Men are more likely to have fat stored in the belly due to sex hormone differences. When women reach menopause and the estrogen produced by ovaries declines, fat migrates from their buttocks, hips and thighs to their waists;[11] later fat is stored in the belly.[12]


When drawing women, think, organic, fluid, curving. Think men=angles. Woman=arcs.

I read that a lot but it actually doesnt make much sense to me. It sounds irrational to me and in my opinion makes figures look like straight out of superhero comics. (Which is of course not necessary a bad thing)

[Zaknafain]

I just saw you were asking about faces to... What I wrote was mostly about bodies.
This link should answer all your questions when it comes to faces:
http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/vector
Just use it to calculate the difference between an average female face and an average male face. Again very interesting that some drawingstereotypes are complete bullshit:
Women have bigger eyes and bigger lips and smaller noses? not really...
The biggest difference seems to be the size of the ears, the lower hairline, the jawsize, the neck and of course: the eyebrows.

[armando]

In order to draw things correctly you have to analyze their visual elements. I suppose it's fine to know about percentages of muscles and bones, but how much does that help when it comes down to drawing and designing? Would knowing the number of growth rings within a tree help us to draw it better? Would knowing about the different layers of rock within a mountain, and their mineral content help us to draw that mountain better? None of that matters because the proof is in the picture, we are making a visual design, harmonizing lines, shapes, values, colors, things that we see whether or not we know about their scientific components.
Some visual differences between men and women:
Men have longer arms and legs.
Women's arms and legs taper more towards the wrists and ankles.
If you imagine a vertical line down the center of the body, the angles on men are more vertical, on women more diagonal: the legs angle in toward the ankles, the forarms angle away from the center line in the anatomical pose.
The proportions of different body parts are different.
What makes a female face attractive? If you need me, or a computer program to explain that then I pity you.

[Flake]

An average adult male is made up of 40–50% of skeletal muscle and an average adult female is made up of 30–40% (as a percentage of body mass)
Apart from breasts and genitalia, this is the only difference between man and women and in my experience its the most important difference.


See I'd say waist/hips/pelvis is probably the big one.

Edit: to clarify, everything else mentioned can be a key difference but they're not 100%.
An athletic woman can have more muscle mass than a skinny dude, a woman can have proportionately longer limbs, wide shoulders and a prominent jaw, a guy can have rather soft, curvy facial features.

As far as figures / silhouettes go, the surest difference is the construction of the waist/hips area.

[Ashtonw]

Hahaha, that's pretty much what you see in most comics.

fixed

[corel]

In order to draw things correctly you have to analyze their visual elements. I suppose it's fine to know about percentages of muscles and bones, but how much does that help when it comes down to drawing and designing? Would knowing the number of growth rings within a tree help us to draw it better? Would knowing about the different layers of rock within a mountain, and their mineral content help us to draw that mountain better? None of that matters because the proof is in the picture, we are making a visual design, harmonizing lines, shapes, values, colors, things that we see whether or not we know about their scientific components.
Some visual differences between men and women:
Men have longer arms and legs.
Women's arms and legs taper more towards the wrists and ankles.
If you imagine a vertical line down the center of the body, the angles on men are more vertical, on women more diagonal: the legs angle in toward the ankles, the forarms angle away from the center line in the anatomical pose.
The proportions of different body parts are different.
What makes a female face attractive? If you need me, or a computer program to explain that then I pity you.

First of all thanks for the info! I'll be posting some pictures of my women poses sketches pretty soon.

As for the last line of your reply - usually the problem is that you do know how an attractive woman looks but you cant point out exactly on what makes you feel that way, thats all.

[Cthogua]

What makes a female face attractive? If you need me, or a computer program to explain that then I pity you.

This is deceptively complex. Not to mention wildly subjective. Ignoring the fact that "attractive" is at once something that popular culture decides and a matter of personal taste. The components that go into making a face attractive vs normal, or even hideous are nearly subliminal. Hence the difficulty of the "uncanny valley" The closer you get to being right, the more the smallest miscalculation of proportion throws the entire thing off. Not only that but our experience of reality is generally a mediated, symbolic one. So under normal circumstances you experience what you think of, and what your brain deems important as the whole, rather than every little individualized bit of information that comes in. That's why drawing from life is at all difficult. We experience the world as symbols. Children draw symbols rather than depictions (typically, if not they may be autistic) When I say some girl was hot, that encompasses my entire experience of her presence, including personality. So it's really more complex when it comes down to actually breaking it down than just simply knowing or not.

On one hand you can say, well, the shapes of the features make for an attractive face, and to a certain extent they do, however that's more a reflection of the culture than some universal ideal. It's also quite easy to find women generally considered "attractive" with oddly shaped features. Jennifer Anniston is a perfect example. If you look at any one feature of her face, they look weird, yet when her whole face comes together it's quite attractive (and if you disagree, you only further prove my point about the subjectivity of the topic) There are some qualities, generally associated with sexual arousal that will be winners simply because we're wired to respond to them. Large, pursed red lips being a big one. Other aspects typically associated with youth are other go tos. "Doe" eyes, round faces, smooth skin. Ultimately I think, you have to decide what kind of idealized beauty you are attempting to invoke with the character, and decode the qualities that evoke that response and seek to replicate those in some fashion. Or you could copy the artists whose women you like until you arrive at your own language.

[Zaknafain]

Don't tell me my generalisations don't work because generalisations are generally wrong.
How can you speak about anatomical differences between men and women without the help of generalisations?

Actually, knowing about the percentage about skeletal muscle helps a lot!
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=76079
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=76078
I admit, loomis is not the best source for acurate anatomy, but you can clearly see one thing:
Compare the forearms, the deltoid, the abdominals, the thighs:
On the male you can make out many muscles that you cant on the female. The silhoutte of the female is much more shaped by the bones, rounded on the areas where you have a lot of bodyfat. The male silhoutte of course has that to, but the influence of the muscles is more apparent.

But yeah, I forgot about the proportions you mentioned.

What makes a female face attractive? If you need me, or a computer program to explain that then I pity you.

I'm not sure but if this was directed at the link i posted so just in case: that link is not about attractivity I was just pointing out differences in face proportions, in no way this was related to the whole attractivity debate (a debate which is really stupid anyway).

See I'd say waist/hips/pelvis is probably the big one.
How does that contradict what I said?
Except if you are talking about the internal bone structure:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/mw/art/dict/pelvis.gif
but since most of those differences are covered by tons of muscles and fat, I'd still say the latter make the most difference you will see most of the time...

I still think we are saying the same thing. The pelvis area is a real important area. I just took the time to point out why and how exactly.

[Flake]

Yeah dude, I was talking about the typical internal fixed bone structure.
That forward tilt of the pelvis, along with the narrowed ribcage is what forms that higher waist, bigger butt, wider hips thing.

That's the one that isn't subject to (much) variation.

I'm not sure if we're actually disagreeing here or not. :D

I'm pretty sure I have issues with Cthogua's "Hot or Not" definition but that'll have to wait until it's not 3am too..

[armando]

Cthogua: Generally most men are going to agree on what's attractive. What makes a man fall in love with a woman is highly subjective, but for stuff like "yeah, she's pretty cute" I think we'll mostly agree.
When we draw all we can do is give our opinion, and there's no need to ask for anyone's validation on that, unless they're paying you. "I think this is beautiful and this is my best attempt at portraying it", or "I think this is what most people will think is beautiful and this is my best attempt at portraying it".
Many reasons can be given for why kids draw the way they do. Really young kids don't even draw symbolically, they draw gesturally, they smear their hands in paint then watch as their hand movements create interesting marks on paper. Other reasons could be lazyness, underdeveloped motor skills, no drawing techniques, and kids tend to draw things from memory and we all know how hard that is.
"when her whole face comes together it's quite attractive" this is, in the words of Loomis, proportion and placement. Everyone is free to decide what features are most attractive. If they've got bad taste, what can be done? except study what's popular and try to replicate it, but without real feeling behind it it will never equal the original.
The uncanny valley isn't worth too much concern, because noone can draw exactly what they want. There's a difference between being slightly off and way off, I'd rather be slightly off.


Zaknafain: I also made some generalizations. Loomis is showing proportions: general shapes and their placement in relation to each other. "50% muscle" is a generalized factual statement, it's not visual, where is that muscle placed and what does it look like?
"FaceResearch.org allows you to participate in short online psychology experiments looking at the traits people find attractive in faces and voices." I don't understand that vector thing, just looks like a bunch of dots.

corel: "usually the problem is that you do know how an attractive woman looks but you cant point out exactly on what makes you feel that way" I just notice what I admire, then try to figure out how to show that using lines, shapes, values, color. Then fail a whole bunch of times, but slowly get better.

[Zaknafain]

The vector programm is a quick tool that can calculate the difference between 2 faces. If you input an average male and an average female face, the dots show you the placement differences: close to the eyes, the red dots and the yellow dots are really close together, most of the time even on the same spot. Tells you that there is little difference between male and female eyes. Around the hairline there is a big difference so there is quite some space between the red and the yellow dots.
You can even do the same calculations with age, and get very precise information about how the features change during the aging process.

the point about 50% muscles is: yes it does not tell you where those muscles are and how they look. But thats something that is completly irrelevant for the difference between men and women. They both have the same muscles and the muscles always fullfill the same function. So the only difference you have here is, that there is a good chance the same muscle in a mens body with the same function will have a bigger volume. Meaning for example that on many men you can actually see the tines of the serratus anterior or the many little muscles in the forearm which in the case of most women just blend together and get lost in the general tube shape of the forearm.
Of course I can name you every single muscle that makes such a difference, but then shouldn't it be enough to say, that there is less bodyfat and more muscle volume? If you know your muscles, you can make A LOT out of that simple statement.
but yeah, you have to know the muscles to make any sense out of it.

[Cthogua]

Cthogua: Generally most men are going to agree on what's attractive. What makes a man fall in love with a woman is highly subjective, but for stuff like "yeah, she's pretty cute" I think we'll mostly agree.
When we draw all we can do is give our opinion, and there's no need to ask for anyone's validation on that, unless they're paying you. "I think this is beautiful and this is my best attempt at portraying it", or "I think this is what most people will think is beautiful and this is my best attempt at portraying it".
Many reasons can be given for why kids draw the way they do. Really young kids don't even draw symbolically, they draw gesturally, they smear their hands in paint then watch as their hand movements create interesting marks on paper. Other reasons could be lazyness, underdeveloped motor skills, no drawing techniques, and kids tend to draw things from memory and we all know how hard that is.
"when her whole face comes together it's quite attractive" this is, in the words of Loomis, proportion and placement. Everyone is free to decide what features are most attractive. If they've got bad taste, what can be done? except study what's popular and try to replicate it, but without real feeling behind it it will never equal the original.
The uncanny valley isn't worth too much concern, because noone can draw exactly what they want. There's a difference between being slightly off and way off, I'd rather be slightly off.


I find that between the guys I know, what we find attractive in a girl, physically, varies pretty widely. Yes there is the general agreement on a lot of movie stars and media personalities, but sometimes for different reasons, plus those people are presented in a way to maximize their attractiveness, and often have plastic surgery to exaggerate "attractive" features like puffy lips, stronger chins, or larger breasts. Or...in a trend I don't understand, starve themselves to the point of looking like one of the emaciated holocaust victims. Personally, ribcage and hip bones...corpse-like, not attractive...but some dudes dig the super skinny look.

Regarding the development of "Childrens" Art, I found this page (http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~kbroom/Lectures/children.htm) pretty interesting. I perhaps over generalized when I said "childrens art" as children go through a variety of stages of development. This doesn't negate my point about our experience of the world being a mediated, symbolic experience, and that being a major hurdle in learning to re-create the image of something from experience. A pretty girl is a mental symbol that is fairly easy to recognise. What constitutes that is a pretty wide array of actual sensory input, that must be de-signified inorder to be analysed objectively. This is what we learn to do in drawing from life, learn to open up the valve of experience and not allow the signifying part of our brain to restrict, or hide information behind assumption.

In regards to the Uncanny valley and your assertion that you'd rather be slightly off than way off....Way off is cartoons, anime. Their own set of proportions are being used, the basic anatomy is the same, but the features are exaggerated in size and placement. Slightly off is just unsuccessful realism. Granted way off can also be EXTREMELY unsuccessful realism, but at that point we're just talking about someone that can barely draw a person.
Those Japanese robots of women and babies are a perfect example of slightly off being seriously creepy.

[Zaknafain]

I have thought about it for a while and I tend to agree with cthogua...

I think the whole attractivity thing makes a lot more sense if you ever get to meet actors. A few friends of mine are actors and they have the strange ability to look attractive at will.
One of them explained it to me once, and though I really don't understand a lot about acting I sure learned that "attractivity" is a lot more about bodylanguage, your voice and communication than most people think. It really really really fascinating watching actors change between "attractive" and "unattractive" at will.
I also read studies that it is a lot about smell and about your voice. Also about your clothes and your social status and the social context of the situation.
My conclusion is: There is no point in trying to find the static visual secret of socially independent objective attractivity. there is not "the one perfect face".

Also thanks very much for that link about child drawings... Got quite a few things out of it.

[Zaknafain]

I have thought about it for a while and I tend to agree with cthogua...

I think the whole attractivity thing makes a lot more sense if you ever get to meet actors. A few friends of mine are actors and they have the strange ability to look attractive at will.
One of them explained it to me once, and though I really don't understand a lot about acting I sure learned that "attractivity" is a lot more about bodylanguage, your voice and communication than most people think. It really really really fascinating watching actors change between "attractive" and "unattractive" at will.
I also read studies that it is a lot about smell and about your voice. Also about your clothes and your social status and the social context of the situation.
My conclusion is: There is no point in trying to find the static visual secret of socially independent objective attractivity. there is not "the one perfect face".

Also thanks very much for that link about child drawings... Got quite a few things out of it.

[corel]

Way off is cartoons, anime. Their own set of proportions are being used, the basic anatomy is the same, but the features are exaggerated in size and placement.

Actually this made me think and i have some questions regarding this:
When examining my drawings i have discovered that i tend to draw more of a comic-marvel style when it comes to faces, body-types etc. This is a bad thing for me because i really aim for more realism than the comic look, my question is how can i make that shift happen? drawing from life is fine but i have found out that when i'm drawing from life i just lack a method of drawing it more effectively, because frankly i just don't know where to start from, so i just draw any line and curve i see but i think its pretty inefficient because usually you start from the overall form of the head(when it comes down to faces..) and then work your way for the details. The way i draw from life right now is very slow and the result always comes out not similar to the origin.

So do you have some advices for me regarding this rather than just "draw from life" because a method, at least in my point of view is a crucial part here.

Another question is: I get the feeling that not many here actually draw all the great stuff they draw, out of memory. When i draw from memory(the small amount that i have :)) i always end up getting comic-marvel character look..
So for example all those great concept art paintings and sketches - are they all from memory or is it that a reference image had been used?

Corel.

[quickreaver]

This is an on-going debate in the art community: to reference or NOT to reference?

Here's a practice that might satisfy both sides of the argument: Draw something utilizing ref, then draw the very same item/figure/environment from memory. Do both continually. Your memorized vocabulary will grow, as you continue to make observations from 'reality'. Some folks will always have a better visual memory than others, and all you can do is the best you can do.

[J Wilson]

This is an on-going debate in the art community: to reference or NOT to reference?

I have to disagree with you. Not much of a debate, at least in places like this where a highly professional result is desired. Use reference. Use it until you don't need it, then probably use it anyways because no matter how good you are, you are better with reference. Unless you don't care about accuracey, like in very stylized work, reference is never a bad thing.

Of course knowing HOW to use reference is just as important as knowing that you should be using it. Bad use of reference is nearly as bad as not using it at all.

[corel]

I have to disagree with you. Not much of a debate, at least in places like this where a highly professional result is desired. Use reference. Use it until you don't need it, then probably use it anyways because no matter how good you are, you are better with reference. Unless you don't care about accuracey, like in very stylized work, reference is never a bad thing.

Of course knowing HOW to use reference is just as important as knowing that you should be using it. Bad use of reference is nearly as bad as not using it at all.

Thats great but it doesn't answer my questions from my last post..i'm still in darkness here :/

[tobbA]

How to look attractive:

http://s.bebo.com/app-image/7925344599/5411656627/PROFILE/i.quizzaz.com/img/q/u/08/02/16/Joey_Tribbiani.jpg

How to not do it:

http://streetknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/george-bush-sour.jpg

Practice in the mirror ;P

I think John Cleese made a documentary on what makes a face attractive, also. :)

http://www.amazon.com/Human-Face-John-Cleese/dp/B00005LC1B

[armando]

Zaknafain: I see now about the vector program, but it's still easier just to look at the faces and see the difference. I agree with you on it being important to know how to draw muscles, but knowing the muscles is only useful after you can set up a general silhouette. I still say knowing about percentages of muscles isn't that important because it's just words, we need to see pictures in order to be able to draw it. Knowing the anatomy is no quaranteed fix for drawing people better. I can ask "How do I draw people?" then get the answer "Learn anatomy.", but then comes the question, "How do I draw anatomy?". What enables us to draw anatomy, enables us to draw people and everything else. We need to learn about design. Maitland Graves on design: "The art of relating or unifying contrasting elements. Man-made order, structure, composition, organization, form. The art of creating interesting visual units."

Cthogua: The percentage of agreement is higher than you're giving credit. Tell me about one guy that thinks Jennifer Aniston is a disgusting troll, even if he's not in love with her he'll agree that she's nice looking, not gross. How many of your friends are attracted to burn victims, or obese women covered in tatoos?
I've read only a little bit about children's art, but I'm not too concerned with most of what they say about it. I can still remember what it was like to draw as a kid, and it's mostly in disagreement with what they write, if it turns out that my experiences were unusual it makes no difference to me. How can it be that we think in symbols, yet are able to tell the difference between a bad symbolic drawing and reality? I don't like kid's art, most people don't. It has nothing to do with me that there are people that do like it. In the rare instance that a kid does a good piece of art then it's good art that happened to be done by a kid artist, it could be abstract or whatever, like a cool sandcastle or stack of rocks.
By "way off" I meant stuff like making a woman look like a man, or making up bizarre anatomy with wierd bumps and bones that have no relation to reality. Robots are different than pieces of art. They're trying to create artificial humans, art has a different purpose.

Corel: There's a sticky on using reference at the top of the art discussion forum. Read Maitland Graves's "The art of Color and Design". Look at the different elements: line, direction, shape, size, texture, value, color. What makes something look real is variety. Contours have lots of bumps, values fluctuate like hell in a small range, all sorts of gray colors, lots of tiny variation.
So start with a method that removes a lot of that variety, then add the variety later. One basic method is what they do in cast drawing, but you don't need to draw casts to use it or spend many hours on it. Essentially what you do is generalize areas into light or dark 2 dimensional shapes. You do that by looking for edges. When an element meets it's opposite or near opposite an edge is created: when straight meets curved, when horizontal meets vertical, when dark meets light, when saturated meets unsaturated, when one color meets another, When Harry met Sally(couldn't resist). The contours of the shapes are then drawn in as straight lines, this eliminates curved lines, so all you have to worry about is line direction, what they call angles. After the shapes are put in, then the curved lines are added, then darks, and so on with more complexity until the picture's done.

[gogidolim]

I'd say you should find some artists who can draw female form very well, and do a whole bunch of master copies. Study from them. Al Rio and Adam Hughes will be great help.