Friday, August 13, 2010

how to draw women's breasts

The main problems people seem to have with
drawing breasts are the shape and the
placement. A lot of artists (professionals as
well as ametuers) make them look like
balloons that have been taped onto the
subject's chest; this is hardly a natural look. If
you look through figure drawing books, you'll
see that they are more like halves of a sphere
or overturned teacups rather than balloons.

Now, note the position. Imagine a central guideline that runs down the center of
your subject's body, as shown at the left. The breasts are at 45 degree angles from
that center line, and are about halfway down the chest (shown by the red diagonal
guidelines). Be very careful not to draw them too close together or too far apart, or
too high on the chest; these are commonly made mistakes. As you will see in
examples below, this basic rule of the 45 degree placement will apply to pretty
much whatever pose you are using.







Here is another pose, showing the torso from a front view.
Note how the breasts are still located at 45 degree angles
from the center line of the body. Oh, also take note of the
shading. After looking at various examples, I find that
shading in this fashion (rather than just following the lower
curves as you would shade a sphere) makes them look
more natural.




Here is one last pose to go over the size and placement. It's
harder to see here, but the breasts are still at the 45 degree
angle from the center line (which isn't draw in this picture; sorry
about that ^_^;). Notice that the leftmost breast is drawn as a
half-sphere, not as a full sphere. If you want to exaggerate the
size, that's your choice, but I personally don't think its
necessary.