Help on drawing female characters...
By
Blood_Wolffe,
Posted on: 2007-07-22 21:31 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
Hehe that's funny. I have a hard time drawing males, they always end up looking effeminate! :P
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Hehe that's funny. I have a hard time drawing males, they always end up looking effeminate! :P
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lol...my males ain't that great either cause I combined things I learned from a Manga/Anime site (the style which I really don't like for some reason...) with my own background and started drawing CoH/CoV characters for practice...then they came out good. But my Sister Psyche looks like Statesman with orange long hair and some weird fetish clothing....lol
(btw...lovely avatar)
I need to see examples of your successes and failures in order to gage what you're looking for, also is there someone you're looking to emulate?
Bookswise, I have plenty to recommend, but again without seeing how much you do or don't know, I'm going to hold off suggesting anything either too advanced or too easy for you to start with...
The instant suggestion I do have is, do you have access to a model (generous female friend/girl friend/in shape relative)? And if not that, this female "Manikin" by artist Art S. Buck which also comes in a male version is a pretty good reference... but again I need to see what you know.
Also.. this online resource is a great help sometimes.
http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/index.htm
and if you search around the net... you might find some more!
I'll tell you what I do to draw the sexes different.
First, women get no definition. Just think, skinnier. Unless you want a bigger woman. There are major differences in body structure though, get Maxim or sports illustrated and look at the waist, hips... uh chest and so on as you draw those parts.
The face is probably the most important. Couple of key differences between women and men...
Women's foreheads are more vertical.
Nose and ears more subtle, or elegant.
Jawline is rounder and subtle/elegant. Chin is rounded more and smaller.
The upper eyelid from the eyelashes to the crease is bigger on women. Makes a big difference.
The brow is flatter on women. Where it meets the temples it almost never sticks out. Its rounded flat.
For men it's the opposite. Try that stuff next time.
After I discovered those I realized how beautiful ALL women are. They are all works of art. I don't know how they tolerate us men.
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get Maxim or sports illustrated and look at the waist, hips... uh chest and so on as you draw those parts.
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That's what I call research. 
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I'll tell you what I do to draw the sexes different.
First, women get no definition. Just think, skinnier. Unless you want a bigger woman. There are major differences in body structure though, get Maxim or sports illustrated and look at the waist, hips... uh chest and so on as you draw those parts.
The face is probably the most important. Couple of key differences between women and men...
Women's foreheads are more vertical.
Nose and ears more subtle, or elegant.
Jawline is rounder and subtle/elegant. Chin is rounded more and smaller.
The upper eyelid from the eyelashes to the crease is bigger on women. Makes a big difference.
The brow is flatter on women. Where it meets the temples it almost never sticks out. Its rounded flat.
For men it's the opposite. Try that stuff next time.
After I discovered those I realized how beautiful ALL women are. They are all works of art. I don't know how they tolerate us men.
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For just starting out, I would condense this advice into two bits: hips and jaws. Comic-book women tend to have emphasis on a rounder hip (usually with tinier waists to aid the illusion) than men, and in their faces women tend to have softer, more triangular chins and jawlines whereas the powerful men have bluntly-jutting, square jaws and chins.
With women you emphasize roundness (mostly in the hips), and litheness (mostly in the arms and face). With men, you emphasize squareness pretty much all over.
Post a few screenies of where you are and I might be able to help you out some. I don't have any particular reference I'd recommend at the moment, but after checking out some samples, might be able to steer you in the right direction.
Oh what the heck... Get your sketchpad, some pens, some Taco Bell, a few hours of time and come on over to my studio. I'll get you caught up in no time. 
^_^
Is that an open invitation ?
Alright, here's one of my works. One the left it is my claw scrapper....and the right one I drew just for the heck of it. They are sort of half finished and as you can see the female one is kindda scratched out cause I wasn't happy with the arms I guess....The reason I chose this one to show you guys was because while looking through my old archive, I figured this is my best shot at a female character...
Linky
My first suggestion is to make the hips bigger. Round them out. Then thin the biceps. I don't draw any bulges in my women's arms. Maybe try ending the ribcage just below the boobs.
Then pick me up on your way to DJ's studio.
Polykarbon's a great site 
There's this tutorial, that I think was actually linked on here originally. I also like Manga Revolution . A lot of really good tutorials on drawing, coloring and everything
Good luck.
Art (NSFW)
Photography
Make the hips wider and the shoulders slimmer on your women. I think that's all you'll really need to do to fix your women up.
That pic actually looked kind of good. Remember, beautiful doesn't always mean, "relative to your sexual preference". Meaning, your women don't always have to ooze sex appeal or anything. They don't have to always have full makeup with perpetually colored lips, they don't have to [censored] their perfectly rounded butts to the side, they don't have to show D-cup boobs as the average size for women, and they don't have to always have to fight crime in something most people wouldn't even wear to the beach.
And while most women are more naturally curvy than most men, don't go too far with it, and don't use sex appeal just for the sale of sex appeal.
Plus, if you're drawing a superhero/villain, fighting crime or a big group of cronies with a body like this isn't really believable. Don't be afraid to show some definition.
The best representation of this that I can remember and that stood out to me was Power Girl in Alex Ross's Kingdom Come.
True, that. Wider shoulders implies a more mannish figure... whereas hips that flare suggest a more womanly figure.
Also, male pecs tend to be squared off, whereas female breasts are teardrop-shaped, very circular, with a definite crease at the bottom.
And don't forget gravity. they don't stick out straight (Madonna's wardrobe to the contrary.)
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
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My first suggestion is to make the hips bigger. Round them out. Then thin the biceps. I don't draw any bulges in my women's arms. Maybe try ending the ribcage just below the boobs.
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Yep I agree totally with the hips. A bit less of a waist and a bit more of a round hip should really cement it.
You got the nice graceful chin in there too which helps bring out the feminine contrast to the male chin on the left.
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Then pick me up on your way to DJ's studio.
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Road Trip! I can't stand Taco Bell myself but if you have a Dark Jedi BBQ I can bring the beef. 
Suggestions
First things first, drawing women comes down to 2 things, making it sexy and or feminine, and making it curvy and NOT like a man which is all about jagged sharp angles to form muscles.
Less is more, because you can define things on a woman, that you can't on a man, or that would make a man look less muscular if you used the same technique.
The obvious area where this occurs is the center line which can form the stomach. On a man you have to draw the abs, but a six pack and defined ribs on a girl will make her look less womanly, and I'm talking over emphasis on these areas. You can define them, but it should be done with the most minimal and light weight lines you can make.
Here's what I did on your piece:
1) the shoulders are rounded, they can be as wide as you like but they should be rounded as supposed to squarish on a guy.
2) this bicep/tricep muscle are long and thin like a cylinder, straight on either side, you can define the muscles, but keep it lean.
3) the forearm muscle MUST be defined on both men and women, it just makes the difference from your bicep going straight to your wrist, and defines the forearm with making sure you place curves here, that taper into...
4) the wrist, which tapers until the hand forms. Forearms are more like a bowling pin, then a straight cylinder.
5) the hips curve from the top of the waist to the knee, it has a few breaks depending on the girl, but this curve can't be ignored. If you draw it at the same width as the shoulders, it forms that "hour glass" figure.
6) the knee, stops the rest of the leg curve, it's short, straight, almost block like, and has tendons on either side, but that's another thing altogether, for now just draw that long curve, break it with a short straight line, and then...
7) make the calve curve, like the forearm, must curve at the top then taper to the ankle. The Curve is NOT even from the knee to the ankle, it forms closer at the top, closer to the knee, then forms the side of the leg.
Thing to remember is the thigh is longer than the knee and calve put together... slightly longer, but longer.
8) the side again here tapers, is not straight down, I won't go into feet, because I hate them, you should ask Fuzzy Wombat who draws the best shoes I've seen in a long time.
9) another thing to consider here is that if the arm bends like you have it, the inner bent curve is a pinched > sign, unlike the right angle of the elbow forming here on the outer edge of the arm.
10) Don't forget your central line, can curve. Here I drew it to show how the nose and face would turn.
11) the shoulder line forms along the collar bone, and then curves down to form the shoulder, your drawing has the shoulders curving above this line.
12) the central body line can curve slightly, to emphasize a woman's curves, where as on a man this tends to typically be straight to show power.
13) lastly the legs curve in different directions from the body line, yours are curving in the same direction, making her appear to be leaning and not standing. Which is why I place the back leg forward, to shift her weight.
Everyone's given you great suggestions. I would suggest studying what you have, making a new drawing, and keep at it. The male figure by the way has a nice whimsical quality.
LJ
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Insert Lady LadyJudgement's wonderful tips here...I wanted ot make teh thread shorter lol
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All I can say to you is a nice /e bow. I cannot express how helpful your suggestions were.
Anyways, I kindda learned where my mistakes were, thanks to all of you guys' help. I also found this
tutorial very helpful, god bless the person who posted it here.
I'm gonna try fixing this drawing and I'll post it on the forums for more feedback.
Thanks a thousand times guys!
Ha I just bought that book, waited a frickin month to get it from Oregon to Canada... it's been out of print, and I love it! In fact I used parts of it today...
I've been drawing cartoons (mostly political, conceptual cartoons) for many years now and I have a moderate background in drawing. However, I have always been taught to draw conceptually and don't care about the details of your characters. So mostly my characters where either shabby looking males or sex-less, face-less, blobs that represented a humanoid figure.
With my relatively low knowledge in figure drawing and specifically comic style drawing, I managed to learn how to draw a remotely nice male figure/hero/villain in the comic style. However, many many times I've tried drawing females and it just doesn't work...they all turn out as skinny men with weird-looking chests and random muscles here and there. I recently made a female toon on CoV and I really really wanna draw her...but I'm just afraid of ruining it.
Can someone please point me to the right direction and give me some good online or offline (I'd very much appreciate the former) resources that can help me draw better comic-style sketches; especially on drawing female figures. I've done a few google searches here and there, but if I followed what it said on the tutorials, it was perfect; if I decided to tweak the pose by a tiny bit, the skinny man with weird chest came back to haunt me.
Some guidance would really mean a lot to me.