How to draw ANY POSE or ANGLE (from imagination!) | YTartschool

If you can draw a cylinder from any

angle, well, you can draw any pose. Bold

claim, I know. But, as a professional

artist with over 20 years of experience,

I guarantee you this video will make it

click for you, or you get a full refund.

The problem most artists face usually is

something like this. Like, you want to

draw a character, right? And you might

have like a vague idea of the pose you

want, like maybe a general sense of the

action they're doing. But, the second

you put it on paper, it falls apart.

It's like all the details you thought

you figured out in your head, well, they

turn out to be way fuzzier than

expected. And I know because that was

the case for me, too, before. Well,

today, I'm going to take you through the

four levels of drawing poses, from the

absolute basics to drawing any pose with

perspective and from different angles,

no reference needed. This will level you

up, so let's get started.

So, before anything else, here's what I

think most artists do wrong, if their

goal is to improve, of course. When

you're looking at a pose reference,

you're probably thinking in 2D. Kind of

makes sense, you're looking at 2D shapes

on a flat surface. But, the moment you

try to draw the same pose from a

different angle, maybe, or draw a pose

from imagination, you realize like

really quickly that you just don't have

the tools to be able to do that. So,

what we're going to practice in this

class is to stop seeing in 2D, like

everybody else, and start seeing as an

artist in 3D space. And the way you do

that is actually super simple. You just

got to master drawing cylinders, boxes,

and spheres in perspective. The entire

human body can be constructed from these

basic volumes. I did a video recently

going over how to construct a body that

way, so I'll spare you the details, but

you can watch that later. I'll have the

link below in the description. But, to

draw the body in any pose, you just got

to have a solid grasp on the main

ingredients that go into it. So, level

one is this. You got to get comfortable

at drawing boxes, cylinders, and spheres

that feel three-dimensional from

different angles, like in different

orientations. And then you practice

assembling those into a standing

mannequin. This will need to feel easy

before you move on because if your basic

volumes are like flat or pointing in the

wrong direction, well, every pose you

build using those will look broken. Now,

there are many ways to draw the human

mannequin. That's just how I do it, but

find whatever works well for you and you

know, get comfortable with it. Then

you'll be able to move on to level two

and actually start posing it.

So, once your standing mannequin feels

pretty solid, well, it's time to

actually start drawing poses now. And

we're always going to be starting from

reference because without reference, you

can't improve. References add new

information to your brain and drawing

from imagination only really rehearses

what you already know. So, if you don't

know much, there's not much to rehearse.

And we'll get to draw from imagination

later, but you earn it here first. So,

grab a reference of someone in a pose

that you'd actually want your characters

in. And this matters more than you

think. Your brain retains information

way better when it knows that it's going

to need it later. Kind of makes sense,

right? So, pick poses that you'll

actually use in your future arts. Like a

dynamic pose for a character

illustration will stick way better than

some random like contortion that you'll

never draw again. It can be a good

challenge maybe, but really not useful

for the long run. And you can find a ton

of photo packs for quality reference or

maybe a different option would be a

website like Pose Maniacs. You can find

a bunch of pose 3D models there and you

can rotate so that you get exactly the

angle that you want. So, with your

reference in front of you, the process

is the same as level one. You construct

the pose using cylinders, spheres, and

boxes if needed. So, you start with the

head, figure out its angle and tilt,

then the torso, which way it's facing,

is it twisted, is it leaning, then the

hips, then the limbs, always starting

from big body parts first. And you're

really aligning those basic volumes in

space to match what you see in the

photo. This isn't easy, right? And it's

not meant to be because once you can do

this well, you'll be 90% of the way to

drawing any pose from imagination. So,

don't skip this stuff. At first, it

might even help to trace the pose if

drawing it purely from observation is

too hard, but that's a really big crutch

that you'll want to move on from as soon

as possible. Now, the steps shouldn't

really take much time and that's the

whole idea, right? If something looks a

little bit off with my basic volumes,

well, I can just go back in and make

some adjustments without losing too much

time. And then from here, I just connect

the volumes, close the silhouettes, and

refine with whatever anatomy I know. So,

always construction first and details

after. Always. But maybe doing just

studies like these is not super fun and

I never enjoyed that part. So,

personally, I wouldn't stop here. Like

if the pose turns out great, then might

as well turn that into a full drawing.

And there's actually a benefit to that

because when the study part is just a

means to an end, it tends to stick in

your brain way easier, which in turn

helps you learn faster. And this is what

science actually calls just-in-time

learning. And that's because studies

without an immediate goal don't tend to

work as well. Now, this level I would

stick to like pretty simple basic poses

in simple angles. Like no extreme

perspective or anything like that just

yet. You're training your brain really

to see the human body as an assortment

of like simple volumes. One thing at a

time. Now, I will say the best way to

build a really good like library of

poses in your head is to practice

gesture drawing. So, lots of quick poses

with a time limit so you're forced to

focus on the big shapes and not the

details. And I would do a ton of that at

this level. This is one of the best

exercises there is to get good at

drawing characters in any pose. You need

to practice this if you want to get

good. Now, this level will actually get

you to drawing from imagination. And to

get there, here's the best exercise.

Take a pose from reference and copy it

carefully so you really understand the

construction. Then, put the reference

away and try to draw the same pose from

a completely different angle.

Front view, now draw it from the side

maybe. Start from a different angle,

doesn't matter. Just rotate it any way

you like and try to draw it from

imagination using of course the original

pose as reference. And when you're done

with this, well, you can check the

reference by rotating it in the same

position and seeing how close you came.

Sites like Pose Maniacs again let you

spin 3D models so you can compare and

check how far off you were. It's a great

tool to use for this exercise and you

can also use the reference for both

angles at first, you know, if this is

too hard. But I would make it your

target to draw the second pose from

imagination. And something that can help

you a lot, something that Kim Jung Gi

made very obvious when he was teaching,

was to put your characters in a box, in

a bounding box. So basically you draw

the box first in the right angle and

then you fit your character in it using

the box as a guide to help measure

things right. You know, like if the

start of the leg is at exactly half the

full height of your character, then you

can split that box in half to find

exactly where that is in perspective.

It's pretty useful. And this is hard,

right?

Whether you do it with or without the

bounding box, the first many times you

do it, you'll get a lot wrong. The arms

attached to the torso wrong, proportions

that are off, and that's all okay.

That's the whole point. Every mistake

you catch is hopefully a mistake that

you won't do the next time. It's like

this big puzzle at first where initially

you're missing all the pieces so the

image is very hard to see, but with

repetition, practice, all those pieces

start to fit in place and the image gets

clearer and clearer. And what this

exercise does is to force you to

understand the pose in 3D rather than

just memorizing what it looks like from

just a 2D reference. And it's practicing

this stuff that makes it possible to

draw from imagination. Because of

course, you're never really drawing from

imagination. We say that, but really

what it means is using your

understanding of 3D space to modify

things that you've seen before. You're

really drawing from memory. Now, all of

this goes way deeper than I can cover in

just a single video. This should

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All right. Now, level four, and this is

the final level. You'll be drawing poses

from your head in perspective, maybe

with foreshortening, and really how you

get there is through the rotation

exercise. Working on this gradually over

time doesn't happen all at once, of

course. So, as you keep practicing your

level three, you'll notice that you need

the reference check less and less, and

eventually you won't need it much at all

because your mental 3D models just gets

more and more accurate over time.

Foreshortening is the hardest part of

this level, but the method is identical,

really. It's always cylinders, boxes,

and spheres just at more extreme angles.

The trick is that the cylinder gets

shorter as it points more directly at

you, and the ellipses on its ends become

rounder. Like a forearm pointing

straight at the viewer is barely a

cylinder anymore. It's almost just a

circle with a slightly smaller circle

like right behind it. And if you

understand how cylinders and boxes

behave in perspective, foreshortening

quickly just becomes another angle. And

don't be afraid to push things too far

at this level, like more dynamic angles,

lower or higher camera, exaggerated

perspective. If you're going to make a

mistake, like I would go too far rather

than not far enough because you can

always pull back, but more timid poses

will always feel kind of static.

And that's all four levels. Think in 3D,

construct from reference, practice the

rotation exercise, and eventually you'll

be able to draw characters in any pose

with foreshortening from imagination.

Using references along the way is going

to be super important, but eventually

you'll find they're no longer necessary.

That's when it gets real fun. Now,

earlier I mentioned jit learning or

just-in-time learning. And understanding

how that works really helped me change

how I approach learning in general, and

it's made a ridiculous difference. So, I

would highly recommend you check out

this class. It will appear up here on

the screen in just a second. I'll see

you over there. Click that link, bro.