SQUATTING POSE & BENT KNEE Leg Mapping (How To Draw)
Summary
TLDRIn this tutorial, artist Mikey demonstrates how to draw anime and manga characters in squatting positions using basic shapes to construct the anatomy. He emphasizes the importance of weight distribution, particularly through the heels, and provides a step-by-step guide on drawing the torso, hips, legs, and feet. Mikey also discusses the squishing and bulging of muscles in such poses, offering tips for achieving a natural and dynamic look. The tutorial is part one of a series and aims to be both educational and safe for work, with more complex poses to be explored in future videos.
Takeaways
- 🎨 The tutorial focuses on drawing anime and manga characters in a squatting position using basic shapes for structure and simplicity.
- ✏️ The artist, Mikey, uses a disposable mechanical pencil on printer paper to demonstrate the drawing process.
- 🏋️ The concept of weight distribution is emphasized, particularly how it affects the character's squatting posture and anatomy.
- 🧘 The tutorial covers closed leg squats and kneeling positions, with a plan to address wider splits in a future tutorial.
- 👥 Character safety and appropriateness for all audiences are considered when demonstrating squatting poses.
- 🔍 The importance of using basic shapes and building blocks to construct the character's body is highlighted for clarity and ease of learning.
- 💃 The application of anatomy and weight distribution extends beyond anime and manga, making it useful for life study and general illustration.
- 🎥 A time-lapse section is included to show the cleanup and refinement process of the initial sketch.
- 📚 References and photoshop files used in the tutorial are available for patrons on Mikey's Patreon page.
- 🎨 The tutorial also briefly touches on how to draw the legs and feet in relation to the squatting pose.
- 💌 Mikey expresses gratitude to patrons for their support, which enables the creation of free drawing tutorials.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the tutorial?
-The main focus of the tutorial is to teach how to draw anime and manga characters in a squatting position using basic shapes and considering body weight distribution.
What type of paper and pencil does the artist use for the tutorial?
-The artist uses printer paper with a number of sheets and a super cheap, disposable mechanical pencil.
How does the artist approach the weight of the character in a squatting position?
-The artist approaches the weight by imagining it sitting down through the headline and going all the way down to the feet, especially when the character is resting on the back of their heels.
What is the significance of the character's knees being together in the tutorial?
-The character's knees being together ensures that the content is safe for work and appropriate, possibly for a two-part tutorial series where the artist will cover more complex squatting positions in the future.
What is the purpose of the basic shapes used in the tutorial?
-The basic shapes are used to construct the character's anatomy and posture without making the drawing overly complicated, while still achieving a correct representation of the squatting position.
How does the artist handle the depiction of the legs in a squatting position?
-The artist focuses on the weight line going down the middle of the character, imagining the weight resting on the back of the heels, and uses cylinders and teardrop shapes to represent the thighs and calves, respectively.
What additional resources does the artist provide for learning how to draw legs?
-The artist refers to a previous in-depth tutorial on how to draw legs, including the musculature and structure, which is available with a pop-up on the screen.
What is the artist's approach to cleaning up the sketch?
-The artist uses a time-lapse to tidy up the lines, focusing on clarifying the construction and ensuring the anatomy is correct, while keeping the sketch relatively loose for exploration.
How does the artist address the depiction of the character's feet?
-The artist acknowledges that the depiction of the feet is not perfect but provides enough guidance to give an idea of what's going on, using basic shapes to represent the heels and toes.
What is the artist's advice for those who are new to drawing?
-The artist encourages new learners to try drawing as it can be therapeutic and a way to take one's mind off life struggles, suggesting that even if they don't end up loving it, the experience is worth trying.
How can viewers access the artist's full pack of references and tutorials?
-Viewers can access the full pack of references and tutorials by becoming a patron on Patreon for just a dollar, as mentioned by the artist.
Outlines
🎨 Introduction to Drawing Anime Characters in Squatting Positions
The video begins with an introduction to a tutorial on drawing anime and manga characters in squatting positions. The artist, Mikey, explains that the focus will be on using basic shapes to construct the character's anatomy accurately without overcomplicating the process. He emphasizes the importance of understanding weight distribution in a squatting pose, particularly how the character's weight sits through the heels. The artist uses a disposable mechanical pencil on printer paper to demonstrate the technique and mentions that the tutorial might be part one of a two-part series. He also references previous tutorials on drawing legs and promises to make all reference materials available to patrons on Patreon.
📐 Constructing the Character's Anatomy and Weight Distribution
In this paragraph, the artist delves into the specifics of constructing the character's anatomy, starting with the spine's curve and the torso's shape. He discusses the importance of considering the weight distribution when drawing a character squatting, noting how the body weight affects the positioning of the legs and feet. The artist uses basic shapes to build the character's legs, focusing on the knees, calves, and feet. He explains the concept of using 'building blocks' to create the legs and emphasizes the need to adjust the shapes to reflect the character's weight and pose. The artist also mentions that the tutorial will cover different squatting positions, including closed legs and wider splits, and encourages viewers to explore these variations in their own drawings.
🖌️ Drawing the Hip and Leg Structure
The artist continues the tutorial by focusing on the hip and leg structure of the character. He explains how to draw the hip area using an elliptical shape and how the weight of the character affects the shape of the bum and the positioning of the feet. The artist uses a combination of straight lines and curves to create the hip and leg structure, emphasizing the importance of maintaining the character's balance and weight distribution. He also discusses the interaction between the leg muscles and how they change when the character is squatting, including the bulging and squishing of muscles. The artist encourages viewers to use these guidelines to create their own squatting poses, with a focus on achieving a natural and balanced look.
🌟 Squatting Poses: Front and Open Angles
In this section, the artist shifts the focus to drawing the character from a front and open angle, explaining how to use basic shapes to create a natural-looking squatting pose. He discusses the positioning of the hips, the shape of the bum, and the interaction between the legs and the rest of the body. The artist emphasizes the importance of considering the weight distribution and how it affects the shape of the character's body. He also talks about the use of guidelines to help with the construction of the pose and how to adjust these guidelines as the drawing progresses. The artist encourages viewers to practice drawing squatting poses from different angles and to experiment with various leg positions to gain a better understanding of the character's anatomy and weight distribution.
📊 Squatting Poses: Squashed Cylinders and Leg Anatomy
The artist continues to elaborate on the anatomy of the legs and the concept of squashed cylinders in the context of drawing squatting poses. He explains how to visualize the thigh and calf muscles as cylinders that change shape according to the character's pose. The artist discusses the knee joint as a hinge and how the leg muscles bulge and flatten in response to the character's weight distribution. He provides detailed instructions on how to draw the calves, emphasizing the squishing effect that occurs when the legs are pressed together. The artist also touches on the importance of considering the character's posture and how it affects the overall appearance of the squatting pose.
🎨 Finalizing the Squatting Pose and Upcoming Tutorials
The artist concludes the tutorial by demonstrating how to finalize the squatting pose, focusing on the details of the knees, calves, and feet. He explains how to adjust the shapes to accurately represent the weight distribution and the interaction between the legs. The artist also provides a quick example of a squatting pose from the front, highlighting the importance of maintaining the character's balance and weight distribution. He mentions upcoming tutorials that will cover more complex squatting positions, such as wide splayed leg squats and splits, and encourages viewers to subscribe to catch these future lessons. The artist expresses gratitude to his patrons on Patreon, who support the creation of free drawing tutorials, and invites viewers to suggest what to draw next in the comments section.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Anime and Manga Characters
💡Squatting Position
💡Basic Shapes
💡Weight Distribution
💡Anatomy
💡Reference Sheets
💡Patreon
💡Tutorial Series
💡Character Proportions
💡Musculature
Highlights
The tutorial focuses on drawing anime and manga characters in a squatting position using basic shapes.
The importance of understanding weight distribution in a character's pose is emphasized, particularly when squatting.
The tutorial suggests using a cheap, disposable mechanical pencil and printer paper for practicing.
The process of drawing starts with a rough line to represent the weight and balance of the character.
The character's body weight should be depicted as sitting through the heels when squatting.
The tutorial covers the anatomy and structure of legs in a squatting position, including the knees and thighs.
The artist uses basic shapes to construct the torso and hips, focusing on the spine's curve and the hip's bucket area.
The tutorial provides a step-by-step approach to drawing the legs, emphasizing the importance of the knee joint and calf muscles.
The artist explains how to depict the interaction between different parts of the leg when in a squatting position.
The tutorial includes a time-lapse segment to demonstrate the cleaning up of sketch lines and finalizing the drawing.
The artist provides examples of drawing squatting characters from the front and from different angles.
The tutorial discusses the concept of 'squish' and 'squeeze' in the depiction of muscles and body parts in a squatting pose.
The artist emphasizes the therapeutic benefits of drawing and encourages viewers to try it out.
The tutorial mentions the availability of reference sheets and photoshop files for patrons on Patreon.
The artist plans to cover more complex squatting positions, such as wide splayed leg squats and splits, in future tutorials.
The tutorial concludes with a call to action for viewers to subscribe and comment on what they would like to see in future drawing tutorials.
Transcripts
artwork critiques photoshop files and
reference sheets are all available on my
patreon hey there guys and girls i hope
you're doing well my name's mikey
welcome back to my room it's time for
another tutorial and today we're going
to be taking a look at how to draw your
own anime and manga characters down low
in a squatting position we're going to
use some basic shapes to put this
together just enough that it's going to
look correct without being overly
complicated but because this is
essentially structuring anatomy this is
also going to be useful for any forms of
life study or general illustration so
i'm just going to go ahead and get
cracking with a spare piece of paper to
rest my hand on and a super cheap
disposable mechanical pencil i'm just
using printer paper here with a number
of sheets and the very first thing that
i just want to talk through is going to
be weight that is when you've got a
character who's squatting down low their
body weight is essentially going to be
sitting down through the headline
and if they're resting down on the back
of their heels that's going to go all
the way down to the feet so i'm just
doing a very vague rough line here i'm
going to essentially start working a lot
more firmly than i usually do and i'm
going to try to keep things
relatively quick but it does mean they
might come out relatively rough as well
and we're going to start off with a
character where we're looking just a
little bit behind but i just want to
show you how i think about that body
weight now this is going to be
essentially part one perhaps of a
two-part tutorial series where we talk
about squatting characters in this
example i'm going to be keeping uh the
knees together the legs essentially
closed in low squats and kneeling
positions just so that everything is
relatively safe for work feeling and
we'll take a look at wider splits and
what's going on with the anatomy on the
inside of the flies and so on in another
tutorial further down the line
not to mention as well we've already
covered uh a in-depth how to draw legs
tutorial where we actually go over the
musculature and the structure of what's
going on around the legs especially how
to break things down and keep it simple
for the knees of your characters that's
available probably with a little pop-up
in the corner of your screen there so
i'm going to assume that you know a
little bit of that just so that we can
break down the rest of what's going on
into hopefully a relatively easy process
so what i'm going to do here is i'm
going gonna think about the curve of the
spine and sweep a little bit in
just here as i come down from my
neckline and then i'm gonna pop out
relatively generously as we go into the
lower part of the torso
and i'm still using some very quick
simple basic building blocks for this as
we look just behind this character's
shoulder line again when it comes to the
building blocks of torsos and how to
break down how to draw bodies in nice
big simple shapes we've covered all of
this before in a whole load of tutorials
playlist hopefully available somewhere
on the right and of course everything
that we do here today i will make a copy
of everything we draw available over for
the patrons on patreon where you can get
the entire pack of all the references
for just a dollar
so here i've got
a very basic back situation i might
imagine that we've got a bit of bum
curve going down around about here
into this part of the hip bucket area
and the middle of the spine just going
to adjust that to go a little bit
further up there and then the shoulder
line that's going to be popping one
circle off around about there
this shoulder circle is going to be
sitting a bit more forward
somewhere
over here i'm going to be focusing
really around the legs hips all the way
down to the feet because that's the area
that's doing some very interesting
things when we draw our characters
squatting down especially if you're
trying to
maybe depict an anime or manga character
who is out on the dance floor or maybe
with a partner doing something more
private in a bedroom and they're really
just bringing all of that business all
right down and low on the whole
situation so let's just kind of work out
what's going there i'm just going to get
some very basic arms out of the way as
well i go down to around about the
bottom of the
chest sphere that we're kind of working
on that elliptical shape to bring it all
together
but i just want to focus on these legs
now i've got this weight line now that
goes down the middle of this character
and i want that weight to sit on the
back of the heels so i'm going to
imagine that we've got
a very vague circle here or one of the
feet the heel part of that might just be
sectioned off loosely here again i'm
working a little bit more firmly than i
usually do
usually i'd work very lightly when it
comes to these slightly more interesting
poses because we like to explore with
some test lines all over the place and
then you can firm up for ones that seem
to be working get rid of ones that don't
seem to be doing the job
i'm also just going to show here the
side
of the bucket of the hips as we come
down there just slowly building up and
adding to the definition of these shapes
there we go and with this foot here i'm
just going to come down and imagine that
it's balancing on the toes on the front
so although we might have this large
generous vaguely triangular shape that
comes down here it's actually just going
to pop at about 90 degrees
if you've got the toe section going off
there this isn't how to draw feet
tutorial which is my excuse for saying
this will not be perfect but hopefully
it's going to be just right enough to
give you an idea of what's going on so
i've got that weight resting down on
that foot haven't even worried about the
legs yet i'm going to go ahead and just
get another one right about here as well
coming down on that edge let's just make
that the under part of the heel now
whether you're drawing shoes or this is
going to be bare feet use these building
blocks as a starting point and you can
build up from there to see what you like
and now if i imagine that right we've
got our level character level shoulders
there's not much contrapostel going on
they've got level hips as well and the
joint's going to come out of this kind
of bucket hip area and pop out for the
legs
now depending on how you kind of measure
out the legs for your character and so
on i just like to make sure that the
entire leg section is going to be at
least about the entire body section so i
might just imagine that halfway we'll
take things from about the middle of the
hip and we'll work our way down and
around so at half of this distance going
up here might be how far i'm going to
pop out here but i'm going to fall
shorten it a little bit i'm going to go
about this far out
and then i'm going to just take it easy
from there because we're going to block
everything back
and i've got a straight line here to
indicate the direction of the leg and i
usually drop a circle right on the end
for that to be our kneecap but when legs
bend and again do check out my how to
draw strong legs tutorial we talk all
about this um things start to move
around so my kneecap circle
is actually going to be around about
here i've gone lower and then when i
come and follow a line back to this part
of the leg i'm coming off the bottom of
that circle line instead of meeting both
of them perfectly in the middle
now i'm still thinking about a big
generous cylindrical shape that's going
to be the top part of the legs and the
thighs and so on but i'm going to
squeeze it a little bit as well so it's
starting to flatten out so let's start
off with a big cylinder that's coming
forward here just a guideline simple
basic shape that's going out over the
calf muscles quite nicely before
sweeping down depending on how generous
you're making your characters i might
just come in a little bit lower in fact
and again don't be scared to have loads
of test lines until you find out what
you do and don't like don't be overly
beholden to any of your initial guides
they're here to help you not here to
hinder you or lock you into place i'm
going to sweep down towards that knee
area
and then just generously curve out
because it's a cylinder remember
and then i might just have a line that's
just a guide
very lightly coming up there because
we're gonna change that shape in just a
moment then in a very similar way okay
let's come up from here we've got the
hard shin bone
it should take us to the bottom of this
circle round about there
but actually i'm going to imagine that
the calf muscle which we often draw is a
kind of teardrop coming down or this is
getting really squeezed now
so i'm going to
draw this kind of
big
squeezing slightly eggish lump around
about here just like so and i'm not
coming all the way down the leg i'm just
bringing it to around about there and
i'm going to now imagine that okay
because this part of the muscle is
popping up and squeezing here
we're following this line to show how
these two sections of the leg interact
as they meet back on each other and then
maybe that's going to squeeze down and
the top part of the leg that sits on top
is going to cover a bit more of this
area especially as the bum
sinks down
over the back of that foot
so i've got a curve here where i'm
actually bumping up into that area to
represent that section of the calf then
i can just firm my way up along this
line here and you'll notice i'm rotating
my hand all the way around the place if
it helps to give me a gentler better
curving line but i'm enjoying a bit more
to get a smooth flow of things
and then as we go up to the knee here
you can kind of imagine because of the
way the muscles are bulging and we're
going to talk about this
a little bit more on the side of the
knee i'm actually just imagining a faint
squeeze there
and then the kneecap almost separately
with its own series of ligaments and
bits and interesting shapes that are
going on is then popping out beyond that
with a slightly flatter tip
just like so
so i might not draw this line shape here
depending on how i'm shading but i'm
going to certainly show that things are
projecting
out past there just like that and in
terms of this torso and top area well
we've covered that a lot before i will
come in on a little bit of time lapse
and clean all of that up in just a
moment but let's focus on what's going
on down here this is where the action
seems to be we've got then the rest of
our bum area here i'm going to sweep
around for the other cheek which is
a bit like a golden ratio we start off
shallow and then we get that curve going
tighter and tighter before we squeeze
into the underside of the bum
just like so
and then again down onto those feet or
heels or depending what's going on with
shoes or barefoot so that's what i'm
imagining here just imagine for that
squeezing away from us
just like so and the musculature
is squeezing out the side so i'm just
putting this little surface line show it
as a second bit of extra bump there
and then squeezing out on that calf
muscle there
before we aim back down towards the shin
line
so that's what's going on in terms of
how i like to think about the weight i
like to actually go right through the
spine line and then sink things right
over the feet if this character is
putting all of their body weight down on
the feet accordingly
and let's take a look at a slightly more
sort of front and open angle and this is
where we're kind of going to enter into
the territory where we're using these
basic shapes but also working around
these forms and trying to get these nice
organic squeezes and squishy feelings in
certain areas but hopefully we can break
that down i'm going to start off with a
line then or the hips let's go
across
here
like so
and then if you imagine that this is my
hip line i've just got that kind of
elliptical shape on its side that helps
me very loosely guide out what's going
to be the bucket area of the hips
themselves again i'm trying to go quick
and firmly
also guys whilst we are putting this
together thank you so much as ever for
subscribing to the channel and i said
we'd do this a while ago we certainly
will be i'm going to do a proper thank
you video for over a million subscribers
it's absolutely amazing and i really do
appreciate it but i do just love the
fact that um you guys are trying to get
into drawing now we're doing closed leg
uh squatting positions today i will do a
further video on wide leg stuff uh which
is a little bit less salubrious but this
is just going to be nice and family
friendly for the moment um but yeah i'm
not afraid to use boobs to try to
convince you guys to get into drawing
because i find it very therapeutic it
can take your mind off of life struggles
you don't have to love it but i do want
you to try it because you might really
like it so there you go thank you very
much for following along
now
i'm just going to imagine right i've got
the bone of the hip here and i'm going
to bring this a little bit further out
on this side as well
and then the front center line might be
just the lower part of the abdominal
wall we've got a little bit of front
tummy there
maybe we've got the belly button
somewhere in his cross zone now i'm just
going to come out and sweep down
before popping down to the bottom part
of the torso and private sphere and then
i'm just going to sweep in just about
the arc that we like to do and again
this is all just part of my guide to
help me in just a moment where i come
down here and inversely with a more
concave line pop up over on this side as
well so these are our bony areas of the
hips here which aren't going to flex
just up here
and just over here everything else might
be squishing around and having a lot
more fun
so if i want to kind of work out how to
evenly keep things going i've got my
line that's going right across here and
i'm going to keep things at that lateral
feeling so i might have my legs popping
out
right over to here if the knee is
sticking out accordingly but that line
is still
parallel to this one
and i could just draw a little
box shape to help guide how i'm just
filling in that particular zone but
remember everything's going to come back
right down on this center line of weight
so i know if i'm going to be popping the
feet somewhere vaguely around about here