<center><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ITxn22RLuV8?rel=0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></center><a href="http://www.letsdrawpeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/030596.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-74" style="border: 1px solid black;" title="030596" alt="" src="http://www.letsdrawpeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/030596-232x300.jpg" width="232" height="300"></a>
Maybe you can already draw people okay, but you want to improve your skills. Maybe you just draw stick people. Maybe you think that you &#147;can&#146;t&#148; draw at all.

By the way, if the last statement applies to you, stop thinking that way right now and start thinking you &#147;CAN&#148;!

Anyway, regardless of what you can already do, there are some things to consider when learning how to draw people. Thinking about these things and learning them will be sure to help you.
<h2>Types of People Drawing</h2>
First of all, people are rendered in different types of drawings. You should put some thought into which one of these you prefer and put the effort into learning that particular type of drawing.
<h3>Cartoon People</h3>
You may want to learn how to draw <a href="http://www.letsdrawpeople.com/category/cartoons/">cartoon people</a>. This is a great way to start out and practice if you are a beginner. More importantly, it&#146;s a great way to have fun with drawing people!

You can really let yourself loose and not stress about something not &#147;looking&#148; right. You can get creative and make up your own characters.

I had a wild imagination as a child and I did this all the time, creating comic book characters and fictional cartoon TV shows. On that note, as you practice and build your confidence, you may find yourself wanting to draw people from popular cartoons on TV.
<h3>Caricatures</h3>
Have you ever seen that artist on the sidewalk, drawing a happy couple who is posing for him, undisturbed at the onlookers walking by? If you were one of those onlookers and saw the drawing, you may have seen a &#147;cartoon&#148; with an unmistakable resemblance to the couple.

You were looking at a caricature drawing. This may be enough to motivate you to learn how to draw caricatures. These can be a lot of fun but at the same time a little challenging. Even though you are drawing what appears to be a cartoon with exaggerated features, you have to take great care to still capture an accurate likeness.

You have probably seen caricatures of famous celebrities and politicians on TV and in the newspaper. If you want to learn how to draw caricatures, trying to do so with public figures can be excellent practice.
<h3>Realistic People</h3>
<a href="http://www.letsdrawpeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/nirma.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-73" style="border: 1px solid black;" title="nirma" alt="" src="http://www.letsdrawpeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/nirma-221x300.jpg" width="221" height="300"></a>Some artists like to make detailed, realistic drawings of people. They want their drawings to look as close as possible to someone who is believable and real. These are my personal favorite!

There are two main ways that I like to classify realistic drawings of people: portrait drawings and character studies.

A portrait drawing is a drawing of a person or people who are posing and looking directly back at you. A character study is a drawing of a person or people who are going about their daily lives, each exhibiting a particular mood or personality for us to assess.

One great way to learn how to draw people realistically is to practice on family members, friends, and <a href="http://www.letsdrawpeople.com/category/celebrities/">celebrities</a>. The important thing about realistic drawing is attention to detail and capturing enough realism to make the person you are drawing easy for others to recognize.
<h2>Drawing Styles</h2>
Whether it be ability level or personal preference, artists create their work using different styles. You may want to experiment with these and pick one as your primary style, or you may wish to openly practice and explore multiple styles as you see fit, not limiting yourself to just one.
<ul><li>Line drawing -&nbsp;This is a very basic drawing with just a simple outline of the major shapes of the person. There is usually little detail in a line drawing.</li>
	<li>Sketch drawing - This can be simple or a little more complex. I really enjoy sketching people! It involves having a very loose wrist and not being constrained with the pressure of making mistakes, often keeping beginning guidelines in the final product. Sketches sometimes include tones as well as lines.</li>
	<li>Detailed drawing -&nbsp;This can be (what started out as) a simple line drawing with a lot more detail added. It can also be a combination of a line and sketch drawing. The bottom line is lots of details.</li>
	<li>Realistic drawing - A detailed drawing of a person (as described above) can still look realistic. But for the purposes of this description, I&#146;m talking about taking things to the next level. This usually means blended shading and the tiniest of details that you&#146;d never find on a basic drawing.</li>
</ul>
Remember, you are the artist! There is no &#147;wrong way&#148; to express yourself, so have fun experimenting with these styles!
<h2>What You Need to Learn</h2>
Regardless of the type of &#147;people drawing&#148; you most want to pursue or your personal drawing style, there are some basic fundamentals you will have to learn.

One thing you will need to grasp a basic understanding of is proportion. There are certain ways we size different body parts and different facial features, and there are methods we use to determine how much they should be spaced apart. This is most important in realistic drawing, but having knowledge of proportions is not totally useless with cartoons and caricatures.

There is so much to learn about drawing faces. The human face has so many unique and distinguishing <a href="http://www.letsdrawpeople.com/category/features/">features</a>: eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair. Each of these features has its own characteristics that we need to consider. For example, the eye consists of the pupil, iris, eyelids, and eyebrow, just to name a few.

These facial features work together in interesting ways to form a variety of expressions. So in order to draw people, you have to form the facial features in a way that conveys emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, excitement, and so on.

But drawing people is not limited to just drawing the face. You also need to learn how to draw hands, which are always doing and helping people express themselves. <a href="http://www.letsdrawpeople.com/category/clothes/">Clothes</a>, of course, are important as well. Maybe you want to draw someone in a recognizable uniform, such as a nurse or a police officer.
<h2>What&#146;s the First Step?</h2>
This just touches the surface of what is involved in learning how to draw people. I recommend reading through this article again and deciding which aspects of drawing people you wish to improve.

Learn all you can by reading other related articles, studying artwork, and watching how other artists draw the parts that are tricky for you. Then&#133;

<strong>PRACTICE!! PRACTICE!! PRACTICE!!</strong>

Draw along with them. Do as they do. Then apply the skills you have learned to independently draw another person, using your own style and creativity.

Practice drawing people you know. Draw from photos, pictures from magazines or the Internet. Draw from other drawings. Draw from your head, using the prior knowledge you have learned about how to draw a person.

The main thing is to keep practicing and don&#146;t get discouraged! If you are not happy with your results, go back and learn from another artist again before practicing some more.

It is my hope that I can be one of those artists you can learn from. I hope you find the information, art, and videos throughout this website useful, and I hope you will keep me in mind as a resource to return to whenever you need additional help with drawing people!

Good luck and happy drawing!

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