How to Draw from Real Life Reference

Gabo Galvez | Comic Art Realm

Visual story teller trained in directing 2d animation, story boarding, scene layout and comic book penciling as well as in character and background design. You can reach Gabo at: http://comicartrealm.blogspot.com.es

For all of the aspiring artist out there regardless of your age, one of the best way to improve your drawing skills is by looking at real life pictures and using these as your reference, not necessarily copying them like a photocopier but using the pictures as a reference to create your own drawing.

You don’t even have to pay a model to pose for you, almost everybody owns a camera now in their phones you could just easily ask a friend to pose for you. But if thinking of a good pose is a problem there are plenty of good websites that offers real life pictures-anatomy for artists. One of these sites is www.human-anatomy-for-artist.com.

You can read a review of the site with a few sample pictures here www.artist-reference.com

Below is an example of how you can use the pictures for your own artworks. I used one of the website’s sample images.

It is best if you do a lot of this practice drawings using real life photo reference. If you noticed I didn’t copy exactly the model as if it where to be like a black and white photocopy. It is not my intention to repeat what is already in the picture, only to learn proper human anatomy and by expressing art you put your own design in it.

With this I can use it to create a drawing of any character I want, for this pose I have chosen to draw Wolverine.