I. Introduction

Hey.

Hey!

 

 

How you doing!~

I am the one and only, the prolific, ocean splitting, pearly gate opening to the cotton candy wonderland of an angelic choir. Jesus H.

 

 

Sike Sike Sike

My name is Maureen, but I go by AlluringCalamity

 

I am a computer animation major, who has been using Clip Studio Paint since 2012. Honestly, I just love how flexible and easy it is to create the pieces that I work on using this program. Hints why I’ve stayed with it, lol.

 

II. What are we going to be discussing?

Today I am going to teaching yall how to draw feet and legs, something that I feel is a universal struggle for a lot of artist them hands and feet be playing more mind games than monokuma from Danganronpa.

 

However, unlike Monokuma I'm gonna go over the necessary terms to help build your foundation of understanding what it means to draw feet and legs. From the common mistakes, to the tools in CLIP STUDIO that you can use to make drawing it easier, while also giving you knowledge on tips and tricks to create dynamic existing feet and legs.

 

III. How to set up your drawing for Feet and Legs

Best way to follow along is pulling out your phone taking pics of your feet and legs. Trust me trust me I know it's weird it was weird however from what I've learned is that drawing from life is where it's at learning from reference when your foot or leg is getting cramped trying to keep to the pose. Also I don't want to get copy righted, I'm gonna start off with taking a pictures of my feet and legs in different poses and dynamics to give a sense of variety. Try something different try something new so you can make it fun for yourself once you're done.

Select CLIP STUDIO icon go to file then create a new canvas make it however you want it to look and then click OK. Now to upload images go to file then import then select the image from the folder that contains your references import them in and then resized to fit your canvas using the scale and rotate tool on the upper panel or the left side of the window. If you are wanting to make moderations to the image you would have to click on the layer and select rasterize.

 

IV. FEET Tutorial

I decided to start off with a side view of my foot, and begin laying out geometric shapes to create a blueprint of the ankle, heel and the angle of which the toes are directed. By using the colored pencil tool that gave off a light, airy feel that didn't allow for my brain to rush into putting details too quickly before pointing out the landmarks of the feet. Once I was done I moved it over, and then began a rough sketch of where I noticed the areas of the foot that demonstrated convex rounding outward and concave rounding inward actions along the foot. Then I go in with a darker bold pen tool and start refining the profile of the feet, adding in the wrinkles to the heel, as well as the toes and the protrusion of bones such as the fibula against the skin.

Just like with the side view, you will still need to lay out the landmarks of the foot. I kept the blue for the ankle, the red for the foot and the green for the angles I will need to keep in mind when going into the sketching process of the drawing.

 

The bones of the ankle protrude a little bit higher on the interior then they do the exterior side so that just means the tibia is up a little higher and rides a little higher than the fibula which rides a little lower on that exterior side and if you were to break down.

 

 

It’s important to notice there is a tilt where I’ve placed the blue circle representing the ankle of the foot, so it is not a straight line parallel with the ground. Higher on the central part and lower on the exterior which means that the tibia is higher than the fibula. Since this image is a above shot, you can see the sloping motion around the ankle, and the elevated level of the ankle to the toes. The sections between are more slender and cylindrical. Keep in mind that very often the big toe is the longest phalanx, which usually aims or points toward the exterior, slightly pointing out but not always it can sometimes be the middle phalanx.

 

 

Now let us draw our attention to the big toe, the big toe’s structure is different then the other toes because it has one less joint. So when it comes to drawing the big toe, you should keep in mind a ramp motion instead of the boxy staircase of the other toes and it is pretty flat to where the tip comes up ever so slightly.. Stay aware of keeping the toes smaller, and arched back around as you get farther to the exterior. Although you can sometimes make the second and even third toe longer than the big toe itself.

 

V. Legs Tutorial

I ended up constructing the whole figure using elliptical shapes, determining where they would be curved or carried by the leaning weight of the figure. I'll be constructing the knees at the third blue line but sometimes that can change depending on height and gender. Since there is a small tilt I ended up tilting the hips slightly. Be very generous with your oval ellipses, keep the hips wider than the shoulder and a relative cylinder shape for the thighs. Make sure to bulge around the area closer to the bottom of the torso before tapering a little to the knees. Keep in mind that the elbows tend to reach the bottom of the floating rib. Keep to having a center line for the thighs, news and calves to help guide the dimensions of the form, so they can help with projecting thighs out where you need to bulge and narrow areas of the body.

 

Where we focus on one leg’s construction, I decided to do a gesture sketch which is general idea of what I am planning on constructing for my overall piece, I do not need to make it painfully detail or spend too much time on accuracy, because it is only there to give you a sense of direction for the composition. Using any of the given pencil tools to give it that sketch work in progress look so when you need to lower the opacity to draw over it, you would not feel overwhelmed or jarred from the previous information left by the sketch.

 

Once you begin adding detail to your drawing you need to understand that the angles being derived from planar analysis will determine to the audience viewing the piece what type of perspective the drawing possesses and the way you pay attention to the subtleties of the organic forms and the need to reveal them to understand the primary form.

 

The red is simply showing the major connections from the knees to the ankles to give a sense of placement.

Right off the bat the simple gesture sketch of how you want the shape to fit, before roughing out the legs using the red bone reference underneath. Note that legs should attach appropriately to the body, through solidifying it by drawing your anatomy using an oval-like

shape to connect the muscles definition.

 

 

The final point I want to make about the legs is the importance of the knee cap. The kneecaps are basically box shapes; however they are angled a little bit so the top of the box is angled downward a little bit toward the centerline of the body. For the thigh you are going to see the interior side that's the side closest to the centerline of the body. The main factor determining that is how the thighs and calf curves around. Which is going to curve around a bit lower than the exterior side And when it comes to the bottom calf you are going to follow. The curve of the calf muscle can be a little higher than the bottom of the knee cap. Making sure to round the muscles around the knee when it is bent provides an organic offset in the curves.

 

VI. 3D Tutorial

You can even use Clip Studio Paint various 3D models that have a wide selection of pre-registered poses or create your own pose from scratch. To find these models you will need to click on windows, scroll down to Material, select all materials. And then drag and drop the 3D model from the 3D folder body type.

 

The tab above the model allows you to move the model and camera in a specific way. For instance, the first 3 tabs move the camera viewing the model, whereas the other 5 move the model.

 

You will need to select the material palette, and go to the 3D option and pick whatever pose you are looking to recreate, and drag the pose onto the canva.Also consider going into the tool property and switch the display setting from normal to fast, to make the editing/tweaking of the pose easier.

 

However if you are wanting to draw over the model, you would need to go to the tool property and change the setting to normal so you would be able to see what you are drawing underneath.

 

 

You can also lock joints for certain parts of the body. While maintaining the overall pose. All you need to do is select this icon -

So now you can move the appendage to better fit your idea, click and hold the appendage to change the position, and you see the manipulator to guide the directions.

 

VII. Closing Remarks

 

Now that you have run through my crash course, I want to show you some common mistakes to look out for when drawing legs and feet.

 

Drawing without a plan

Too much symmetrical

Too symmetrical, very tapered symmetrical top of the leg, very boxed knee with no angle to it.

Creating stiff, robot looking figures

 

Outward contour on the bottom of the feet

 

Ignoring the knee, showing no structure

 

Not giving the heel to the feet looking very off balance

No heel to ball yes ankle to heel to ball

Too tall or short toes

Adding detail too soon

Making the toes look like sausages or triangles instead of going with a while stairs approach

Ignoring figures environment

 

Poses that you are uncertain about, anything you don't encounter as much you just won't be as good at because you don't have the day to day practice working. Remember that consistency builds progress, copy what you see, sudy what you copied, practice what you studied from imagination, construct what you observe, study what you observe, then practice what you studied.

 

It was a pleasure making this leg and feet tutorial and I hope you enjoyed it! Wish all of you artists good luck, this has been AlluringCalamity time to head out, peace!

 

The End

• music +

 

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Bossa In My Heart by SergeQuadrado (Pixabay.com)