Illustration Tutorial: 5 Steps to Draw Poses

Follow Jose Luis Ágreda's advice to draw people in natural poses

Life drawing is one of the essential skills of any illustrator, whatever their style. Knowing how to capture the real world will always be useful for building characters or settings. The main problem novice illustrators face is that it's easy to get lost in the details of a figure instead of looking at its overall structure.

José Luis Ágreda (@agreda), illustrator and comic artist who recently worked as art director for the animated film Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles, has spent decades drawing poses and has synthesized everything he knows into five essential steps.

1. The line of action

The first thing to look for is the line of action. Which one best represents the activity that the person we are starting to draw is doing? Is he or she perched? Running? Leaning on something? Look for the line of action that best defines it.

Well thought out lines of action will give us the basic dynamism of the pose we are drawing. With a few strokes, the movement of the characters will already be represented, which will serve as a reference when doing the rest of the drawing.

2. Find the supports

The next step would be to look at what are the supports of the person we are drawing, whether they are on the floor, on the walls or in any other supportt. We have to take into account if the support comes from the legs, if the legs are perpendicular to the ground or inclined, and if there are other support points.

A good understanding of what our figure's supports are is key for the next point.

3. Find the body's reaction to supports

It is essential to understand how parts of the body, such as the hip or shoulders, react to the different points of support. The hip will rise on the side where the support is, and in turn, the shoulder will lower to compensate, moving in the opposite direction to the hip.

Once we have marked the reaction lines of the body in relation to the supports, we can continue with the drawing.

4. The twists

Another essential thing is to pay attention to are the torsions, if the body twists at some point. If we reflect them correctly in our drawing, we will gain much more definition and depth in the pose of our character.

Starting from the first elements that we have already mentioned (lines of action, supports, the reaction of the body to those supports), it will be necessary to add where the body bends, which will subtly or clearly modify the supports, the position of the shoulders and hips, or the arms. It is important to remember that, although looking from the front a person may seem to have no torsion, in many cases another angle will help us to better understand what position their body is in.

5. The ground

Finally, drawing the ground helps us finish closing the exact position of the character in their environment. We can draw it as a shadow, or build a very simple mesh: the important thing is to understand what the ground is like under the feet of our character, and the angle it forms with respect to it.

If you want to keep learning with José Luis Ágreda, don't miss his online course Illustration, Climax and Denouement, where you will discover how to make the most of the expressive possibilities of illustration through a written story.

You may also like:

- Illustration of Characters with Style, a course by Alberto Montt.
- Creative Techniques for Design and Illustration of Characters, a course by Gastón Caba.
- Introduction to Illustration of Characters with Gouache and India Ink, a course by Andonella.
- Character Design: From the Sketch to the Final Art, a course by Paulo Villagrán.
- Narrate Vignettes with a Pen, a course by Miguel Gallardo.