Drawing People in Balanced Poses for Character Illustration

1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome to my latest class. I'm thrilled to see so many of you are eager to learn more about character in children's book Illustration. That's our focus in this class. We will dive in into the world of stylized character design, and this class is perfect for boosting your skills, whether for personal projects or professional work. Hi. I'm Iva, and I'm full time illustrator based in Central Europe. My experience with creating engaging characters has helped me in a range of projects, including award winning Leg of Friends, which aired as a series on Netflix, numerous books, magazines, and bespoke illustrations for various clients. And during this class, we'll start off with sketching the simple ideas. I will guide you through using balance in character poses, both balanced and unbalanced to create dynamic illustrations. Will focus on using simple shapes to establish proportions and poses, which helps ease the pressure of getting everything perfect from the start. Along the way, we will weave in little stories in our characters. I will also show you how to draw inspiration from everyday life, simplifying real world references for your character design. This technique is great for building a strong foundation and developing your own unique style. Now for the fun part, we are setting our characters in a dreamy, rainy autumn scene with umbrellas and bright color palette. This will add an extra layer of enjoyment to our practice. I will be there every step of the way, making this class accessible for beginners and more experienced artists alike. So I hope when you watch and follow this class, you will feel super happy about your illustration and you will share it with others because I'm really looking forward to seeing your take on the project illustration. And when you are sharing it on Instagram, please make sure that you take me both in the image and in the description because that way I can see your illustration and I can share your art with others, and maybe you will see it in one of the next videos. So if you don't know yet, you can find even more drawing tutorials and classes from me. Procreate and other tutorials, and I have more than 40 classes and other content. And you can find different topics for building your art skills. And there is a variety from beginner level to more advanced levels. Before we dive in, don't forget to follow me on Instagram. There, you'll find my latest artworks and glimpses into my life as an artist. So without further ado, let's start and see you in the class. 2. Warm-up – Simple Standing Pose: In order to talk about balanced and unbalanced poses, let's sketch our first character. And as you can see, I imported an image, which we can use as a reference for this more basic pose where the character is standing. So I will focus on sketching the head first. I think the neck, torso, pelvis, and the legs. And as you know, I also have other character classes if you want to practice sketching poses more. Right now, I'm just very quickly sketching overall pose. And then we can add the umbrella. And if you're wondering, I'm using soft grain brush. So here I am paying attention where the feed are on the ground. So they are approximately on the same level. Then notice where the knees are And then we have the shoulders and the jacket which is kind of opening towards the head of the character, and then we have the waist and the shoes. And let's just sketch nice simple hair, which is more curly. And you can also define the umbrella a little bit. All right, so I'm just adding a shirt and a few more of these details. And I think some of these exercises are great way to practice sketching characters. And then you can sketch a little bit of the ground. And I will quickly add a face to this character as well. Now I will reduce the opacity of this sketch. And now I will add a few more defining details with one of my favorite sketching brushes, which is brush number 13. So I will just add few lines to define the sketch a little bit more. And then the other leg and a little bit of that cute outfit for the rainy season, we can add some pockets. And then we have the other hand. And as you know, I have also the class about sketching hands if you want to practice drawing hands too. All right. Now I'm reducing the opacity of the overall sketch, so I can show you what I mean on top of this overall character. And to do that, I will change color. I will take green colour and I will take bigger sketching brush. All right. So what I wanted to mention here is that the center of a gravity is usually basically in our center, right? So if our center of gravity is here, then you want to pay attention where the feet of the character are placed. So I will just delete part so you can see it better. So now we have both of the feet here, and the center of the character is aligned where the head is. So this character is pretty much balanced, right? So what if I take the same character and I duplicate it? So let's just move it here. And I will distort the legs of the character. So if you would see character like this, you would see that it's falling to the side. The center of the gravity is here, but it's not aligned with the bottom foot because this leg and foot is too much to the left, even though it's aligned with the head. And the center of the human, but this foot is not aligned with the center. When you see character like this, it's more obvious that it's not centered because you already feel like the character is falling to the side. So what would happen if I take the legs of this character and still kind of distort it. So let's see if I move it this way. So you can notice when one of the legs is still aligned with the center of the character, it still feels fine. But if you move the legs completely outside of the alignment of the center of the character, then it starts to feel like there is falling to the side. Alright. So this one is unbalanced and this one is balanced. So always think about where is the center of the gravity of the human or of the character that you are drawing and if it is aligned with the head and how the feet are in contact with the ground. Because the center of the gravity should be always above the kind of zone created by the limbs in contact with the ground. You can do this also when the character is kind of standing on one hand, for example, but just always think, how is it aligned with the center? 3. Warm-up – Active Poses: And here is another reference photo for our practice. So as you can see from this one, that it's clearly not balanced in the same way as with the previous pose. So let's practice sketching this and then let's discuss why these type of poses are also interesting when considering the balance, and I'm sure you can already guess. So for this one, I will first sketch action line, and I talk more about the action lines in the class about poses. I will start with this loose sketch and the pelvis and one leg. I'm simplifying here, and then we have the other leg and the calf and the foot. This one hand is here. I need to move it a little bit to the side, and then we have the second arm with the umbrella. So here, try to focus on the placement of all the limbs. How are they in the relationship to each other? Now I will reduce the sketch, this rough sketch, and I will make the brush a little bit bigger and I will add the other details. Defining the shapes. These practice sketches are great for you to observe the volumes of the character. But you can still keep it fairly simple, like in cylinder shapes. So you can imagine the volume, and I have a class on volume, as you know, as well. So you can look at that too if you want to practice, this class doesn't become too long if you already know all about volumes. Here, I'll just suggest the and then I'll sketch the other one and then I'll just add the umbrella. And I'm kind of creating this more as a gesture pose rather than perfectly anatomically correct character. So it's still very much stylized. Now I will sketch the other leg. This one is more in the air. Again, always try to notice where the joints of the characters are so that will help you to pose the character easier. Even with action poses. Because sometimes we want to exaggerate certain things, which I think it's great. But also, you should be aware of where the things are, before you exaggerate, kind of, like, learn the rules. So you know how to break them, you know, like the quote, kind of master the rules before you break them. I can make the head a little bit bigger here. Oops, I need to swap to uniform selection. All right. I think this is good enough for our example. I will reduce the opacity as before, and I will redefine certain parts of the sketch, so it's a little bit more readable. All right, so I will reduce the opacity of everything so we can sketch on top. So I will again take a different brush so you see it better. And now I will take the orange color as we used before because I want to mention here where the balance should be. So we have the center of gravity here. And the head is here, right? So if you sketch a line through the character, you clearly see that this character is not balanced because the feet are here and it feels like she will fall to the side because the ground is somewhere here. I mean, there is a little bit of perspective, so it might look like the ground is a little bit further up, but we can sketch it here. So, you know, so why are we talking about this pose when we talked about mostly about how to balance the characters, not how to have them, not balanced, right? So sometimes you will need instability in your characters, especially in action poses, as you might have guessed. So you need to find good compromise or a balance between unbalanced and balanced characters to create motion in the characters that you want to convey and communicate with your viewers the controlled gestures. There is something that you wanted to create, not that it happened by accident. So now you know that you need to pay attention where is the head, center of the gravity, and how feet and limbs are interacting with the ground. And I thought that perfect project to practice this more is to create controlled gestures and balanced and unbalanced walk also how the characters are walking on the street. And when we already have this mood or topic of umbrellas and rain, let's create more characters kind of walking on the street in the rain because also it can be quite nice and colorful. All right, let's do that. 4. Project – Walking Character: All right. Let's start sketching our characters. So for the first one, I thought we can create more balanced character, so you can sketch a line for yourself where you would place the head. Then we will have the torso, the center of the gravity, and then we will have the limbs. So the feet will be touching the floor approximately where the center of the gravity is and then the second leg can be somewhere here. Then I thought I can add an umbrella here so we can partially cover the head of the character, and then maybe she will have this bigger coat. I'll just add a bigger coat here because it's kind of like wintery or rainy season, and maybe she will be holding a backpack. I'll just add a backpack here and then add a hoodie for the coat. And maybe a scarf I think would be nice and then add the long hair, which I think it's nice for this character silhouette then the umbrella, as I said, it's partially covering the face of the character. I'll just sketch the umbrella like this and then she's holding the umbrella maybe with the hand on the other side. This is the bottom part of the coat, making simplified shapes. Then this leg is little bit I mean, the foot is little bit off the ground, so I'm keeping it still pretty simple and simple shoes. It's rounded. Then she might have leggings. And the leg is bend a little bit. And then the other leg is behind the one in the foreground. And the shoe is little bit off the ground. Here we just need to make sure that both feet are on the ground, she's not flying in the air. Here I'll just step the canvas and then I will move this other foot with a selection tool just to make sure that it's on the ground and align the size of the feet. So now I'll just make sure everything is aligned. As you can see, I'm sketching in my watercolor paper template, which helps me to add textures on top of the colors later and also I can turn on and off the paper texture. I will do that later in the process. Here I'll just add a few more details to the backpack to help me define the shapes before adding colors. And the arm is somewhere here and you can open variety of references that you like to combine character like this, and I have a class like that too, like how to combine different references into one illustration. So if you are wondering how or why I'm combining certain references like this, it's explained more in detail in that class too. So you can check that out. All right. Now I will reduce the opacity of this one and I will add color to this character. The layer will be under the sketch layer. I will set the sketch layer to multiply, and I will add colors with my gouache brushes because I like the texture of the gouache brushes. But you can use any other brushes that you like for this part of the process. I will take this brush number 23 and I will take a grayish desaturated blue color, and I will add color to the coat of the character. And before you start coloring, always check if the head is aligned with the center of the balance and where the feet are. If they are placed in a way that you want them to. Now that you finish the sketch, you start coloring and then you realize, that's actually not what I wanted. I will add this grayish color tone to the shoes. You can design the shoes more if you like leggings, I will create in this darker blue so almost black. I think that will be a nice contrast. As you can see here, I'm already getting textures. If I zoom in more, I'm already getting textures from the template. So I don't need to create so much texture if I don't want to because, you know, template like this with the textures, it's making my work faster and easier. So this is an option, how you can create textures as well. So you can work with brushes or you can use templates like this. So now I will use Alpha lock. Oops. Actually, you have to click here. How I usually use Alpha log is deep and I use quick menu. Now I will use a little bit lighter color, and I will swap to more bristly brush. Then I can add the subtle gradient quite quickly with these bristly brushes. I think here at the bottom, I can make it a little bit warmer but darker. You can imagine a fog coming from a pavement. I think that would be pretty nice. Now I will disable the alpha log and I will go back to the brush 23 and I will add similar color to the backpack. Using limited color palette for this character in a way. So everything is matching. Here from the sketch, I can already sample this darker color and I can use it for the shadows. For that, I will take more detailing brush, which is more thin, which fits great for details. I'll just define this backpack a little bit more And I will add a little bit darker shadows here under the coat, and I'm always checking here on the smaller preview. And I will add a shadow here where the legs are kind of like overlapping. And I will do the same for the coat. Here, I think I will make the shadows a little bit more blue, not so gray as it is on the sketch. I'll add some shadows here and just under the arm. And we can add a pocket for the character. Now moving to the scarf, I think, something in the orangy maybe almost pink tones can be nice. I will try it out. I will swap back to this brush because it has more sharp edge, which is nice when you are creating bigger shapes, I think, because it looks more defined. And also it has nice rough scratchy texture and there are many different brushes that I like to try and change when drawing because each brush can give you a different look and feel. I will use the similar color for the umbrella and then we can adjust it. Here I will be a little bit more careful with the edges. And you can work on different layers if you want to have more flexibility. Then here, I want to have it a little bit more round. Here you can hold the pen in place and then edit the arc and that will help you to create the shapes easier. Now I can just drag and drop the color if the shapes are closed and then drag to the right Now I will alpha and I will make one side a little bit lighter. I'll just move the slider to towards the lighter colors, take bristly brush, so I can create a soft gradient. I need to make the brush a little bit smaller. I can build this gradient, imagining the light coming from the top right. Here I can make it even lighter and maybe more purple. Perfect. Now I think I will draw the head under the umbrella so I will create new layer and I will take light brown color, I think for the hair, which would work well, I think, in this case, because I'm sketching on a separate layer, it's definitely faster and easier just to define the shapes. And I have also a class about drawing hair. If you are wondering how to build different volumes and design hair, here I will create soft gradient as well with a little bit darker color from the bottom. I need to alpha lock it, of course, and then a little bit lighter from the top but not too much, it's not the same as the umbrella. Now we just need to create a face again on a separate layer, which will be much faster. I think in this case, I will use a lighter skin tone because we have already darker hair. Here you can choose what skin tone you would like to add, of course, always try to create variety. Here I will just go for something like this and let's see how that works. I think in this case, it's all right. Make sure that the neck is placed where the shoulders are and then I can add a simplified hand here, just holding the backpack, here I can see that I need to add more hair. It's have that nice flow. Okay. I will adjust the scarf here. The hoodie is a little bit lower. We can also move the umbrella slightly lower, I think, just to cover the face a little bit more and adjust the hair here, I think. You can define the shoes a little bit more, as I said. So I can add a little bit more of these curved shapes and maybe a slight heel and I will do the same for the other shoe. We have one character and you can create as many characters as you would like. Now, I will add more characters with the same technique. I have a lineup of characters. Always make sure that the feet are helping you balance the character within the center of the gravity, the head, and the legs. 5. Project – A Moving Character: So the next character, I thought we can create the movement, which shows that the character is more in a hurry. So we don't have to again draw the face if you don't want to. And here, I think we can create even bigger umbrella, as you can imagine, some of the people have these gigantic umbrellas. And we can angle it a little bit more towards the way the character is moving basically forward. So it implies that you have to angle the umbrella when you're walking. Maybe I can make this umbrella slightly smaller. Maybe it was too gigantic. And here, I'll just add the torso of the character. So it will be more angled towards the wind maybe or the sense of the movement. Then I will add the pelvis. We can always adjust these things, so don't worry. It doesn't have to be exactly like your first sketch. Here, there will be the hand holding the umbrellas. So here we need to figure out where is the character and where is the umbrella stick, because it will be somewhere here, so it to the character needs to hold it with the other hand. So it will be kind of like somewhere here. Alright, so it can be still the same hand, but the umbrella can't be tilted as much. Always think how you will connect it with the top of the umbrella. And then we will have this maybe floaty hair. I'm drawing similar character now, but you can, of course, draw different character. And here, because the character is tilted like this, 1 ft should be somewhere here, I would guess. And then the other one will be more determined going forward. So these legs are a little bit more wider apart, and then we will kind of bend one of them. And this one will be a little bit more straight. I will add similar shoes just to reduce the complexity and this foot in the back will be bent I think we can add fun flowy skirt, like I showed you and explain the movement in the recent class. The skirt will be flowing here and then we can add a bigger jacket. Because I think it's quite fun when these pieces of fabric are floating in the wind. You can maybe add a scarf as well. I think I will add one character just with a scarf because that will be nice addition to the illustration, I think. Maybe some big sweater. We see the legs well. I will add leggings and the same here. Okay. And then a hair on this side too and the top of the jacket. So let's see. Maybe this is a little bit too much, so I'll take this part of the sketch and I will rotate it. And I think this type of movement is enough. Let's see. Yeah, I think this works well. I need to make sure they're in the same height. Again, I will place it somewhere here, and then I will move the other leg hoops, a little bit lower. They are alged because this one is already on the ground. Or actually what I can do, I can lift this foot completely off the ground. So then we can have it even more like a action pose. So we need to make sure that the feet are kind of the same length. These two or you can add kickers and small heel maybe on these winter boots. So maybe they're a little bit wider on the ankle. Then maybe there can be dots or flowers on the skirt. I think that can be pretty cute. I'm just defining the sketch a little bit more. I see what is where. But I think it should work well as it is. Perfect. So now I will reduce the opacity of this one and kind of merge them together. Or I can set both of them actually to multiply. I don't need to merge them. Depends how many layers you have available in your document. Here, I need to reduce the opacity of this one even more. So we see the colors that we are drawing, and I will use the same brushes that I used before for the basic colors. And I will try to use similar colors as I used on the other character. So kind of they fit together in one illustration. So here I will make it a little bit lighter, I think. So here we have the jacket. Again, I will alpha lock it. I will make it slightly lighter at the top We have this nice variety. Then I will remove the alpha ok, draw the hair. I can use similar hair color, or maybe this time, I can use lighter hair color. And it will be this nice and flowy. So maybe you can create more like a blonde character this time. If we had brown hair before. Let's see if it will be visible, maybe just a little bit darker color. No, I think the previous color was kind of okay. Maybe I can make it a little bit less saturated. There will be hair on this side too. Perfect. Now, I will again, the gradient Maybe this character can have pink hair at the bottom, can be pretty cute. Now let's add the skirt. I think the skirt can be this less saturated pink, which would fit there I think pretty nicely. It can be actually more peachy color. And then I will add some flowers and I will change the brush to more like a sponge brush, which will help me to create the flowers quite fast, and in easy way. And maybe some blue flowers would be nice in this case as well, so you can mix and match some of these colors together to create a variety there, maybe more blue. Yeah, I think that's pretty cute. Now I will go back to a brush which has a more defined edge, and I will use a similar color for these leggings here. And I will draw the shoes right away as well. Perfect. I will make these shoes. Also gray, maybe with darker so there is a little bit of variety. Perfect. Now, let's add a sweater for this character. I think we can have it more like brown color because we don't have the brown on this character yet. Then I will use lighter skin tone for this character. Because it's blond, so I thought it would work a little bit better. Here we don't see the face actually that much. That saves us some work. Here we can add maybe more of that hoodie and the hair over the hoodie. I think that's pretty nice. Now we can add some shadows as well under the arm. And also here under the hoodie and basically just define these shapes a little bit more so they are a little bit more readable, but still just stylized and not adding too many details just to keep it still quite simple. I'm just sampling colors from the canvas. Here I will take the lighter blue from the jacket. And I will just draw the second sleeve on the other side, which I think works well. Now we just need to add the umbrella and I will sample the pink color and I will make it a little bit more red. I think that could be nice this pinkish red and I will define the umbrella shape and I think on the separate layer will be easier. All right, so we have the umbrella. I will again use the alpha ok and I will add some shading on the top. I will make it a little bit more pink and lighter on the top, just to have some variety, and then a little bit darker here on the side, maybe not as much. And here, I think I can make it even lighter maybe the light is reflecting from the umbrella even more in certain parts. Perfect. And with a more detailing brush, you can add some details like this umbrella end when it's holding it together, and you can also kind of define the umbrella a little bit more. If you like that kind of look, especially for this one, And here we don't have the neck defined very well. So I think we can add a little bit of this brown color here so we can suggest that there is the sweater and possibly maybe a scarf or something kind of going through the hair. So a little bit of the detail here, I think would be nice. And then maybe a slight definition of this jacket, how it's folding here and the shadow from the umbrella and maybe defining the hair just ever so slightly here. From the distance, it's a little bit more readable. Perfect. All we have now two characters ready. And then here you always want to make sure that the feet are kind of aligned on the ground. So here we can always double check. And for example, if you see that one of the legs is a little bit lower than the other, you can always use the selection tool and move it and see that the procreate will kind of help you to align the legs. They are touching ground approximately on the same level. Here we can leave it a little bit lower as we wanted to have this foot a little bit higher, and then you can also tilt the foot and always compare on the smaller view, then you can also add the ground. So I will switch for this one, and I will use kind of this reflected rainy surface. I need to make it a little bit darker and adding the ground kind of helps you basically to ground your characters and see how they look kind of compared in the environment. So here you can see how the character is kind of like walking. And you can take the leg and you can rotate it. So it's more aligned with the center of the character, making sure that the anatomy works also under the clothes. All right. I will sketch more characters in the same way, and I'm looking forward to see your versions, which I think will be super cool. So I'll just speed up the drawing of rest of the characters because I will be using the same process. 6. Your Turn, Drawing Character #3 in Real Time: Wow. 7. Adding More Moving Characters to Your Scene : Go. U. Wow. Wow. Wow. W 8. What to draw next?: So I edit few more characters using the same technique, making sure that the characters are well balanced and at the same time with the intention to move forward because of the rain. So as you can see, I edit some raindrops to this illustration as well. So you can use the same technique of coloring and balancing the characters if you want to build a bigger lineup of characters kind of on the street and maybe you can add the whole street if you want. But hopefully, you had fun creating these balanced walking characters. And if you want to expand on the knowledge you learned in this class, you can watch my other classes about characters and also about colors called color palette and color and light master class. Visit my teacher profile to find them. And if you would like me to share your projects on Instagram, please tag me in the Instagram stories in the post and post description. So I can help you and your art to be discovered by more people. So thank you so much for watching, and I do hope that you really like your illustration and you will share it with others. So don't forget to tag me if you share it on Instagram. If you want me to share your illustration with others. And thank you again so much for watching and see you in the next class. Bye.