Tips on drawing females?

Anyone got tips on drawing females? I can draw men, but my women tend to look like men with lipstick >.> I can't do the bonestructure and femanine touch- thoughts?

Man... this question is harder than it sounded.

I mean, I can draw realistic women from photographs or life, and they look like women, but I'm copying lines and angles and shadows when I do that. I can draw women and men in my own anime-inspired style, and with stylized comic art it's all about visual tricks that 'say' male or female -- for example, women are typically drawn with bigger eyes and pointier noses, and men with thicker necks and sharper cheekbones, which could be an exaggeration of realistic features or it could be complete artistic license.

How do you tell the difference between male and female characters in art by other people who draw in a similar style to your own?

I find when I draw women I tend to make them softer & rounder looking.  There's no lines on the neck for an Adam's apple, and they tend to have a waist that flairs out into hips. Men tend to be more straight up & down or more like an inverted triangle (think upside down V). Give your ladies some delicate features rather than rough, strong ones ones.

Ark, here's one of the few examples of girls in my gallery: http://www.paperdemon.com/art/view/12663

It's Sessh/Rin but I hope thyat someone who has no clue as to who they are can tell that Rin, on the left, is a woman, while Sessh, on the right is a man. She's smaller/shorter than he is & has no Adam's apple.

I also have an example of another woman, Sakura for Naruto & I think you tell she's the woman & Sasuke's the man in this one too. http://www.paperdemon.com/art/view/14100

In this one, his eyebrow is thicker & he has an Adam's Apple. You can't see her neck because of his hand on her face.

I don't have any pix of women up here, but if you PM me, we can amke arrangements for me to send one I did of Rin as a bunny girl. (I'd have to look for it) You can see her legs & figure and maybe that'll help you figure out how to get your girls to look less like guys & more like girls.

Hope this rambling helps... ^^;

So roundness hmm? The neck and stuff is no problem... um- how about concentrating on the face- you say their eyes are larger.... like, physically bigger? Or seem bigger cause of the eyelashes?I think my biggest problem is I can't get a femanine nose or face shape....

Uh- I welcome passionatly anyone that can do a red line crit on one of my female pics ^^; That may be the beter answer cause it's too difficult to explain it seems

I'm not saying that women have bigger eyes, I'm just saying that in certain styles their eyes are drawn bigger. It's artistic exaggeration, probably to make them look more emotionally open and readable than the men. Similarly, you could draw their noses thinner and pointier to make their features look more delicate. In general women's chins don't protrude forward as much as men's chins do.

All of this stuff is exaggerated in comic art, whereas the differences aren't quite so pronounced in real life. A woman can have a strong chin and still be identified as a woman; a man can have delicate features and still look masculine. But comics are stylised art, which is sort of like impressionism -- you do things that evoke certain feelings in the viewer even when they aren't precisely realistic.

huh. for me it's more the other way round; i'm not very good at guys, but i can draw women fairly well. i think what you want to do for the face is make the lips a bit fuller, and the nose smaller and more delicate looking. women also tend to have a shorter upper lip than guys do. also, guys usually have a squarer jaw, and while women can have a defined jawline, it's usually at more of an angle and not so square.

On Oct 2, 2007 12:31 pm, Vestrael said:

Problem is that there's alot of women out there with non oval faces- I have a heart shaped face myself which has angles- some have square. Not all women have that smooth angle. I think visual referances are needed for this forum T.T

This is a hard one because while there are 'tricks' artists use to make faces look more feminine, realistically, there's not much difference between male and female faces.  Not all guys look ultra masculine and not all girls have delicate doe-eyed faces.  Even in my art books, most faces are quite androgynous.

On a side note, you've never struck me as someone who has problems drawing females.  The girls in your gallery all look like girls to me...

It's true that women generally have softer features (not always though!)--less squared jaw lines; smaller, more petite noses; rounder foreheads; slender necks; rounder chins.

'Tricks' people use to differenciate from guys to girls usually revolve around mouths and eyes--wider set eyes, slightly larger, fuller eye lashes, thiner eyebrows along with fuller, rounder lips.  Sometimes they emphasize the cheek bones with shading...

If you're still looking for someone to do a red line on one of your females, I'll do it--just pick one that you feel looks particularly masculine.

On Oct 3, 2007 9:59 am, Eshkenazi said:

My problem with women... I'm not sure, maybe they do look like females, but to me, they don't look femanine. they look masculine. I'd like to be able to draw girl that looks like she's tough, but stil femanine. I can't do that.

My most rescent girl pic is this:-

(Incase the thumb doesn't load cause it's mature, here's the link to the picture in Red curtain)

To me, the guy is more male, then she is female if that makes sence. I can draw pretty boys that look like men- I can't draw tough girls that look like women. Anyone can really slapp a set on the front of a girl and call them a female. It's the feel though I can't do. Maybe I need more curves- I donno.

<edit> This is difficult for me to post a *masculien* looking pic cause what happens is I spend twice as long on the pic making it NON masculine. For a pic that I have spent the same amount of time on the male as I have the female, here's an example It's a quick drawing though, but I'll let you pullit apart for the female crit sake OTherwise, I'm not even happy with Bryan in this XD </edit>

Looking through your art again and then reading your comment, I think I may have kind of grasped the problem you're having but I don't know if I can put it into words that make sense.

You say you're having problems with your women looking masculine while I'm looking at your art and seeing that you're really already using a lot of the tricks out there to make a feminine face--emphasized lips and eyes, rounder foreheads, delicate noses...so to me, your female faces *do* appear feminine.  I think the problem may actually be partially in your *male* faces.  Of course, they do look plenty masculine but overall, if you take away the short hair and and facial hair, the faces are pretty androgynous (that's not a *bad* thing).  So when you compare them to your female faces, there's not a lot of difference.

The guys you draw have sexy lips (or I think so! *L*), they have square jaws but not neccessarily very strong jaw lines.  Their noses are usually very straight and bordering on that sort of 'delicate' thing I've been harping on.  And that I can see, they don't have noticeable adam's apples..(though some might and I just missed it.).  So without the male faces being particularly angular to begin with, any 'softening' you do of the female face won't be very apparent when the faces are side by side. 

I'm not trying to say you should make Schwartzenegger faces, mind you.  But you may want to look at what and where to emphasize on both sides of the equation instead of just on the female side.

P.S. I was going to upload the little red liney thing I did this morning on the actual artwork but paper demon insists it does not exist or has been locked or whatever...so I suppose I ought to just upload it here...?

Another thing you want to consider at least a little bit is pose. Not only the way females are drawn but the way they're standing and even the expression on their face gives it a more feminine touch. Women for the most part express their emotions in at least a slightly different fashion than men do. Even things like hairstyles give impressions on the gender of a character, long hair is one but even short hair can look feminine depending on how it's styled. My gallery is comprised of mostly females (mostly the same female for that matter >.< but there are some pictures of guys as well, which might help you point out the differences.

Edit: I decided to quickly sketch up a bust of both male and female characters side by side and annotated key differences between them, hope it helps! Clicky Clicky ;D

On Oct 4, 2007 7:13 am, Eshkenazi said:

I guess this is true- I do draw a pretty boy type guy, but they also happen to be young (Late teens- Alex is 16-20, Bryan is a little older 18-22), which is why they're like that (rounded etc...) You'd need to compare the females with my *older* males in that instance I guess Blaze in this picture would be in his 30s, and alot more masculine looking. I don't want to sound like I'm putting down your critique (cause it DOES make alot of sence, and I may be doing it a little), but I've put alot of research into aging characters- I'm still learning, but I think I have a few distinct ages I can draw now (maybe ^^

It's difficult to describe why I don't think they look femanine enough after that, cause it is true- my boys do look bishie- maybe it's more that they're not pretty? Or something else

You're point is equally as good as Eshkenazi's- I'm use to doing poses men would do, and I'm *definetly* not use to drawing the female body. I have big troubles with breasts and hips.

Maybe what I should be focusing more on is the body then? Maybe its my female bodies rather than their heads that I can't get female looking enough? Looking at this picture- even though it's an old picture, most of my female bodys start off like this- breasts with little shape. That with a generic looking face makes this a dubiously gendered elf.

Perhaps if people have tips on bodies insteed? This has been some great advice on heads ^^ I'm not sure if enlarging eyes and stuff is entirely suitabel for my style as it is for a manga style, but maybe others may see it and benifit?

Simple. Think of the form of an hour glass, then appily that with human features. You'll have to have an imagination to understand that advice. Good luck.

On Oct 4, 2007 2:35 pm, arkillian said:

Yes, the example you posted of an 'older' guy does look more masculine--but I think if you look, you'll see that his nose is proportionally larger and line of his cheek down to his chin is more 'square' as well. 

In the picture you originally posted for me to critique (which I mentioned I can't find it on the site to attach the critique I did) D: one thing I pointed out is that the basic outline of both faces is almost the same in both the guy and the girl.  From their brow to their cheek bones (since they're both in 3/4 view, the bone structure is very obvious) to the line and curve of the chin--it's almost done identically.  Their noses are almost exactly the same too. That's why I suggested some changes to the guy's face (as far as squaring off the area around the chin and making the nose seem more 'angular') as well as the girl's face.  The main area you might adjust on female faces is the part of the lower jawbone right near the ear.  You tend to make this heavily square--it looks alright on males but on girls, you may want to make that part more of a gentle curve than such a hard angle. 

Something else I wanted to point out is how you do shoulders--I've noticed that many of your girls have very square shoulders.  One thing that helps me with shoulders is remembering that girls have shorter and straighter collar bones than guys.  This creates the feeling of a longer, more graceful neck as well as sloped shoulders instead of the wider, more squarish shoulders of guys.

On the image you just posted of the female form, the first thing that sticks out to me is the narrow hips.  Women do have wider pelvic bones that men so it's important to remember the hips.   Everyone was emphasizing 'roundness' in the face and it's true over the entire form.  Women generally just have more curves to their forms due to the different skeletal structures--the collar bone and pelvic bone for example.  They also store fat in different places--hips and thighs for example.

For some reason, I always give my guys kind of squarish bums. *L*  Just a sort of personal anecdote but yeah.  Girls get round bottoms and guys get squarish ones.

Well my suggestion would be to look at Rennaisance and 19th-century figure drawings. I like to draw my women with fleshy, voluptuous bodies, which include wider hips and a classic S-curve in their gesture. Study the voluminous nature of the fleshy masses and try to bring more three-dimensional form to your draftsmanship. Anatomical knowledge is also key. You don't have to necessarily adopt a fine art / classical style, but when you apply those approaches to your manga-ish style, I think it would improve your drawings by light-years, IMO.

And I'm going to go out on a limb in this next suggestion, but poses you draft could evolve from evocative words.

Read these next words and see how they might bring out certain feminine poses from your pen: gorgeous, stimulating, amazing, pretty, voluptuous, naughty, sensual, cute, pleasant, happy, seducing, vibrant, pure, sweet, exciting, lascivious, charming, explicit; self-confident, erotic, teasing, immaculate, dazzling, inspiring, beautiful, nice, sexy, provacative, natural, healthy, lovely.

Think of what you want to evoke from the audience and see if a pose can come to you...

Hmm, okay. I had the opposite problem (could draw women but not men) so I had to memorize a lot of differenences between males and females. Maybe these will help you too.

The tops of women's heads tend to be more rounded, whereas the top of men's heads is flatter, almost squared off. Men's heads are also bigger in general.

A woman's waist is much higher than a man's. Men tend to have comparatively long torsos with short legs; women tend to have longer legs with shorter torsos. Think of that old proportion rule: (but remember that it does bend sometimes) the length of one head from chin to nipples, then another head from nipples to navel, then another from navel to groin. If a woman's head is shorter, all these distances will also be shorter. If a man and woman are standing next to each other, and the woman is shorter, her waist still may be higher than his.

Another proportion rule: the foot is the same length as the forearm. Since men indisputably have longer feet, it follows that they will also have longer forearms. (Therefore, women have shorter feet and shorter forearms.)

And another: the open hand is the size of half the face. Men not only have bigger heads in general, but tend to have longer foreheads. Women have smaller faces to go with their smaller hands. Also, men tend to have squarer hairlines, and women rounder ones. With some male pattern baldness, hair actually recedes in the corners, making the hairline very convex rather than concave. Women's hairlines are nearly always concave.

Men's hips aren't as wide as their shoulders, but that's the minimum for a woman. (Unless she's a starving model or a coke addict or something.) The base model for a woman might be the "hourglass" figure, where the hips are the same width as the shoulders, but in many women, the hips are wider. This shouldn't be solely accomplished with bone structure: don't be afraid to pad that ass!

Which brings us to fat. The modern trend of uber-skinny girls is, at best, androgynous. Look at old black & white erotica for examples of what *used* to be considered sexy and feminine. (I, unfortunately, end up drawing a lot of scrawny girls myself, since my subject of choice seems to be fifteen-year-old Japanese girls. But I sneak a little meat on their bones when I can.) You can make a girl look plenty girly, (and have, by the look of your art) but if you want her to look really really feminine, you need to give her curves in more places than the boobies. The stomach, particularly, should be soft rather than muscular. A line down the middle is plenty of definition. The hips and thighs are good places to start adding the chunk on. I'm not saying to make them obese, but simply more natural.

Oh, and while you're making all those curves, make the waist proportionally tiny. Not defined, just delicate. Estrogen actually causes a smaller waist, so it's biologically feminine.
If the face is still too masculine for you, again, look at fat content. A very thin woman gets a more angular, and therefore more masculine face. Furthermore, making the lips fuller is not always necessary, (since men sometimes have full lips, and women sometimes have thin ones) but I find that men have wider mouths, and women thinner ones. This will make her lips appear to be fuller, even if they are the same fullness as a man's, because they are fuller proportionately compared to the width of the mouth.
Eyes are not necessarily bigger, and while longer lashes are often used to denote girls in cartoons, I find this is a feature common to children, not women. (Men's eyelashes actually seem to be longer than women's, in my observation.) However, look at the area defined around the eye, between the brow and the cheekbone, the area that would be cast into shadow in certain lightings. In men, this area tends to be wider and shorter, in women more rounded. This gives the illusion that a woman's eye is rounder than a man's.

Personally, I think the comments about pose are hogwash, since that's purely cultural, and we're talking anatomy. You should be able to draw a man and woman in reverse clothing and poses, and still have the audience be able to tell which is which. However, pose and posture are two completely different things. Because of differences in skeletal structure, women sometimes stand quite differently. To compensate for the heavier bottom, sometimes the stomach is thrust out with a strong, almost upward motion, and the shoulders are thrown back. Um, that sounds ridiculous when I try to describe it...I recommend just sitting in a public place and watching how men and women stand. Not pose, not try to make an impression on anyone, just how their different anatomies pull them when they're minding their own business, and no one seems to be looking. You can take mental notes at school or work, or wherever it is you go.
Oh, and if her boobies touch in the middle and she's not wearing a push-up bra, (or is well-endowed in a restrictive sports bra, or pushing them together with her hands...you get the idea) you're doing something wrong.

*falls over*

Wow- thanks you guys!! These are alot of usefull tips. ^^ Yes- sometimes women should be sexy, and others just femanine. The nuts and bolts of the female figure I do know, btu the finer details are what makes it. I'm going to try more with my female pictures. If I can, I'm going to attempt a female poster for this upcoming convention and see how it does as a personal challenge. I'm not going to like it one bit but If I can succesfully draw a female that LOOKs femanine and not just a male with boobs, I'll be one step closer to being an awesome artist ^^

Thank you to everyone that has given me their 2 cents ^^ *is getting close to a dollar in change now XD*

OMGs- PD change... *loots PD change and cackles hillariously*

Aiffe has some really good info there. However one thing certainly threw me off for a second there. When he said feet the size of a forearm I was like... hold on there, wait a minute. I think he means bicep and not forearm. I know my feet certainly aren't that big. Another thing to note about posture is that most women while standing tend to keep their legs, or particularly knees, closer together, if not touching, while men like to spread them farther apart (What can I say? We're too lazy to focus that much on balance XD), same thing usually goes while sitting too. Also I find at least for me that my girls tend to look their most girly with either a warm, happy smile, or a pouty face. Very rarely that I've seen (even in real life) are women's faces not lit up with emotion. Very flat expressions truly do look more masculine.

Also, hope my little reference sketch helped some ;D

On Oct 10, 2007 3:00 pm, Fire Angel Studios said:

That's cause men don't like to crush thier *bits* Women don't need to worry about that Don't worry- I hang out with tones of men so body language is something I do know about the genders

On Oct 10, 2007 3:00 pm, Fire Angel Studios said:

Have you ever tried the foot to forearm thing on yourself?  Most people I share that with have the same reaction as you..."There's no way my foot is that big!!"  But I can assure you that on the vast majority of the human race, it's an accurate comparison.  For me, it's exact. 

If your foot is not pretty darn close to the same size as your forearm (elbow to wrist), then you're one of the few exceptions.  Bask in your uniqueness. ^_^