How To Draw Women With Curves

If you want to draw a girl or a woman in a cartoon way, it may be hard to find a tutorial that shows how to depict a female body without sexualizing information technology. It's true that the drawing mode uses simplification and exaggeration to be more constructive, merely it doesn't mean that you can draw the female person class in only one style—even if it'southward a pin-upward cartoon.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to draw a cartoon woman without same-face or aforementioned-body syndrome. You lot'll learn everything about female form drawing—the proportions of a female torso, various shapes of the torso, and how to draw a drawing female face up stride by step.

To go some inspiration, take a await at the hundreds of character designs on Envato Elements. Or for a shortcut, endeavor a character creation kit!

Cartoon character creation kit — Drawing character creation kit

i. Female person Body Proportions

The main deviation between a female and male body lies in the waist area. Females tend to have wider hips, for two reasons: they're anatomically wider to brand giving birth possible, and estrogen makes fat accumulate in this area. This makes the waist look thinner. Males take smaller hips and wider chest/shoulders, so the waist isn't equally noticeable.

So, to create a deviation between a female and male person trunk in cartoon style, put the focus on the waist in females and on the shoulders in males.

female male proportions comparison — These are realistic proportions. As yous can come across, the difference is not that striking. In cartoon manner, y'all tin can exaggerate it.

Body Shape Types

Merely information technology isn't the end of it. The ratio between the shoulders, waist, and hips differs amid females, creating 4 basic body types:

Hourglass: the shoulders are equally broad as the hips, and the waist is much smaller than this. Although this type is oft considered the most feminine, research shows that only 8% of women have this blazon of silhouette.
Rectangular: the shoulders and hips are equal, and the waist is only slightly smaller than them. This is the most popular type of silhouette for women.
Inverted triangle: the shoulders are wider than hips. Although this is considered a masculine body shape, in reality it's more common in women than hourglass!
Triangle: the hips are wider than shoulders.

But this was just about the skeletal ratio. The fatty accumulation affects the silhouette equally well, and females tend to accumulate it more easily than males. In women, fat usually accumulates in the hips, buttocks, and thighs, but the skeletal proportions affect the last outcome:

Low fatty: when there'southward lilliputian fat in the body, the skeletal proportions are more visible. The hips are angular, because information technology's fat that makes them circular. Although the waist is thin, it may non wait modest, considering the hips without fat may wait smaller equally well, reducing the contrast.
Medium fat: here, the skeletal proportions dominate the silhouette. The hips are rounded. Information technology is possible to be fit with a medium level of fatty, because women burn down fat more slowly—peculiarly in the hips area!
High fat, diamond shape: when fat is accumulated in the tummy area, the waist tin exist lost. Nonetheless, if the hips stay wider than that, it may announced every bit if the waist moved college.
Loftier fat, apple shape: hither, fat has been accumulated in the waist area, making it wider than the hips and shoulders. This is a popular type of silhouette for post-menopausal women considering estrogen stops directing fat to the hips. It tin can occur in younger women also, if they didn't have wide hips or a narrow waist before gaining weight.
High fatty, pear shape: when the hip basic are broad, gaining weight effectually the waist may not affect the dissimilarity that much. The triangle shape is kept—information technology just gets rounder.

As well this, there can be other factors affecting the proportions:

Some women are naturally congenital smaller: shorter, with lower measurements in shoulders, waist, and hips. They may accept a normal level of fatty and appear skinny regardless.
It'southward possible for the torso to be longer. This may make the waistline look shallower and the legs shorter.
The legs are typically every bit long as the body over the hip line. But they can be longer!
People with dwarfism will usually take a commonly shaped upper body, with but the legs and/or arms being shorter.

Disclaimer: body types are often described in different ways in different sources. I chose to describe them in a manner that is the most useful for drawing. It may non be consistent with every listing of body shapes yous tin notice on the Internet.

If yous want to learn more most the human body, check out these tutorials:

ii. How to Draw Breasts

Breasts are oftentimes fatigued equally simple spheres stuck to the breast, but it'southward not a requirement of a cartoon exaggeration. Yous can describe realistic breasts in a drawing way! Yous just have to understand how they work.

Imagine breasts as water balloons attached to the chest with skin. They change shape because of gravity, and they may hang lower when the skin gets weaker (3).

When drawing the breasts in whatever view, it's good to draw them equally ovals, slightly heavier at the bottom. Keep in mind that they're not dissever from the residual of the torso—they're attached to the breast muscle, which goes nether the armpit.

Breasts come up in many shapes and sizes, but there's 1 rule: the bigger the breasts, the lower they hang and the less circular they look. Breasts announced circular and close to each other just in ii cases: in some types of implants (3), and in a button-up/sports bra (4).

3. Drawing Female Face

Female and Male Facial Differences

Because the cartoon manner simplifies facial features, the difference betwixt females and males tin get blurry. That's why feminine features get exaggerated:

The eyes are big, round, and depression in the face.
The nose is small and not as well visible.
The eyebrows are thin and high.
The lips are big.
The neck is sparse.
The face is oval.

This is a general recipe for a cartoon female. Yet, it'south not necessary to stick to all these elements. On the opposite, drawing every female this way volition inevitably pb to the same-face syndrome—a popular upshot where every character looks like the aforementioned one, simply in dissimilar clothes and with dissimilar hairstyles.

The easiest way to solve it is to mix the feminine features with masculine ones—after all, that's how it works in the real world. Some facial features are called feminine not because they but appear in females, but because that's what'southward traditionally associated with females. Different cultures may take different ideas of feminine facial features, so yous're not doing annihilation wrong by calculation masculine lips to a female character.

feminine masculine facial features — Feel free to add together more than one masculine characteristic to your female person faces and run into how far you lot can go without misgendering the grapheme. In fact, yous tin can describe a fully masculine face up for your female person character and mark her femininity with the hairstyle and clothes.

Female Face Shapes

Although oval is considered the nearly feminine face shape, just like with the torso shape, it's not the about pop. There are many shapes that you tin employ to avoid aforementioned-confront syndrome:

Long
Circular
Oval
Square
Center
Diamond

Y'all tin also play with the distances between the facial features.

Indigenous Differences

There's another reason to ignore the official drawing rules for a female person face—females of various ethnicities accept different facial features, and they shouldn't be ignored for the sake of achieving a "classically cute character". There are many types of dazzler—utilize them in your cartoon and say farewell to the same-face syndrome!

Cartoon Aging

The femininity of cartoon characters is more often than not accomplished by using youthful features, peculiarly huge eyes that bring an baby to heed. But information technology doesn't mean that all your female person characters must exist the same age! You tin create historic period differences among your characters past adjusting the distance betwixt the chin and the eyes. You lot tin can too brand the optics and lips smaller, and add some simple wrinkles.

4. How to Depict a Drawing Female person Face Footstep by Stride

Step one

Let's draw a cartoon female person face now in three different styles: semi-realistic, typical, and babe-like. Get-go, draw a circle. Draw a cross inside it.

Step two

To draw a graphic symbol consistently, you lot must be aware of its facial proportions. It can be helpful to use any of the guidelines that are easy to replicate—for instance, one-3rd or half of the circle's lower half.

Footstep three

Draw the eye shape. For a realistic face up, keep the optics loftier and relatively narrow. Place them lower and make them rounder for cuter faces. There are no strict rules here, and yous can experiment to create your own style.

Footstep iv

Add the curve of the eyebrows.

Footstep five

Add the lower role of the confront. The proportions will affect the last look of the face: realistic faces have more than space between the eyes and the mentum than "babified" ones. Every bit always, make sure you know which guidelines y'all are using to keep your grapheme consequent.

Footstep 6

Add the nose as a simple circle.

Step 7

Add the lips in the form of a unproblematic line. Regardless of the style, go along the lips i-tertiary of the style from the nose to the bottom of the chin.

Footstep 8

Add the ears.

Pace 9

Add the neck.

Step 10

Draw the iris within the center. The cuter the character, the bigger the iris should be.

Footstep xi

Draw the student. The same rule applies here.

You tin can learn more well-nigh drawing cartoon eyes (and other facial features) in this tutorial:

Step 12

Add the shape of the upper eyelid.

Pace xiii

Add the shine in the eye. It should be asymmetrical.

Step 14

Draw the olfactory organ.

Footstep 15

Draw the lips. Outset the line between them...

... then the upper one every bit a elementary shadow, and the lower one as a curve.

Step 16

Add the eyebrows.

Stride 17

Draw the hair. Keep the lines simple and flowing.

Step 18

End the drawing past erasing the guidelines and drawing the final lines over them.

5. How to Draw a Female Body in Cartoon Style Pace by Step

Step 1

Let'south depict the whole female body now. Call up of a pose or find a reference that you lot similar. Using references is not cheating, every bit long as y'all only look at them and don't trace them. I used these:

Woman sitting in a pin-upwards pose
Woman in a sassy/proud pose
Happy woman showing a peace sign

You can notice more references on DeviantArt.

Sketch your pose in a simple way. Endeavor to capture the principal curve of the body and legs.

Step 2

Add the breast and hips. Keep in mind that these don't have to exist the anatomical, skeletal chest and hips, simply rather the whole area of the body simplified to an oval. For example, you don't have to draw an hourglass silhouette to change it to an apple tree later—draw it equally an apple already!

Step three

Add the arms. Keep them unproblematic, as if y'all were shaping pieces of wire.

Step 4

Add together a unproblematic caput.

Step 5

Add the joints. Refer to the diagram at the outset of this tutorial. If you lot observe that something is wrong with the proportions, information technology'south a good time to set up them.

Pace six

Define the position of the face. Draw the center lines.

Step 7

Add basic features to the face.

Step viii

Add the muscle masses and the breasts.

Step 9

Add the fingers.

Footstep x

Outline the whole trunk, as if the graphic symbol were naked.

Step 11

Draw the final lines. Don't forget to use a reference for the clothes! If necessary, draw the guidelines for the clothes starting time—information technology's better to spend some extra time planning these than to ruin a overnice drawing with a rash decision.

Stride 12

Finally, clean the guidelines. You lot can besides add together shadows with a greyness marker.

Good Job!

At present you know how to depict a woman using the drawing style. If y'all want to learn more than about drawing cartoons, check out our other tutorials: