Male drawing

Have you always wanted to draw a male figure or male portrait, but didn’t know where to start?

Drawing a man is an overarching skill that we can break down into sub-skills:

  • Drawing the head
  • Drawing the body
  • Drawing separate body parts: for example, arms, legs, torso
  • Doing quick gestural sketches of the whole figure
  • Working out relative proportions of specific body parts
  • Drawing the skeletal system
  • Drawing specific muscles 
  • Using a reference image or drawing from a life model

In our art lessons, we will be practising these skills together.

I don’t think there is any prescribed order of which sub-skill it’s better to start with. I think the main thing is to start. Whatever is available to you – if it’s a reference image of your friend or a photograph you found online, or whether it is your favourite café where you can sit with your sketchbook and observe people and sketch them. Oftentimes, people like to be drawn! Observing a person plays a big part in understanding how to draw him or her. I would say that I spend just as much time looking at a person as I do actually drawing them.

Learn art with Arina

I offer one-to-one and small group classes to help you draw a male figure. Here are some examples of what we will be drawing together. Here I put only the final result. Depending on your previous drawing experience, it will take between 1 hour to 3 hours to finish similar drawings. Oftentimes, students start a drawing in class, working out the most difficult bits, and then finalise the drawing at home.

Who drew it? Me. 2024
Who drew it? My student Ziqi. 2024

How to start practising drawing a male figure?

You can book an initial chat with me during which you can tell me what you would like to draw. You can show me the artworks you’ve done before. You can also show me reference images that capture your imagination.

What are some benefits of having an art teacher?

Having a one-hour session per week with a qualified and experienced teacher has benefits. Even though you will be still spending more time drawing independently, during a one-hour with a teacher you will be given specific strategies of how to draw a male figure, and how to measure human proportions. You can then continue using these strategies during your own art practice. A one-hour session per week will accelerate your progress, it will equip you with necessary strategies and at the end of the end it might save you time.

Book an initial chat with me

First consultation is free

What will be the most important thing to learn in the first few sessions?

Proportions. Angles. Lines.

If you’re just getting started drawing a male figure or a male portrait, you will notice that it’s not always easy to have a reliable hand-eye coordination. Why is hand-eye coordination important for drawing? Because we want to be able to evaluate the relative width, height and length of objects and then draw these objects using our best judgement. During the first few sessions, you will be learning how to measure proportions and angles. There are specific techniques that you can use to do it, and I will demonstrate them to you.

The second thing you will be practising is line qualify – whether lines are curved or straight, thick or thin – you will need to have a control over line quality and master it. You will be learning about how to create the line that you want so that you can achieve a realistic effect.