Vanquish Studio

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Women’s Poses: Practicing Drawing the Female Figure

It’s funny but if you ask any artist they will tell you that they have an easier time drawing one sex over the other. Some will say they can draw women really well but not men. Others will tell you men are a lot easier for them to draw than women. It’s peculiar but true. Try it and find out!

In the meantime, I started another series on my YouTube channel: the figure! To me, both men AND women are hard to draw but, yes, I find women more difficult to draw. Capturing a feminine quality while retaining a strong figure is a challenge, to say the least. What can you do to practice? What can help when drawing the figure? Warm ups!


Look through any magazine, although I’m partial to fashion and sport magazines for the fantastic poses you can get, and find four poses. In your sketchbook (you should have one by now) draw those four poses you chose. Change it slightly by adding a prop. Think of this as a warm-up for your creativity. Imagine really working out, you don’t just grab the biggest dumbbell and start lifting! With a cold muscle? Ouch. You will definitely hurt something. If you are safe, you do a warm-up first. Why not do the same thing before drawing? Sketching at least four poses is a great way to warm up. You can check proportions, spacing, angles, anatomy and so much more as a warm-up before drawing. It’s a lot easier because it’s a sketch, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t worry about the details like facial features and clothing, just draw with correct proportion and foreshortening. If you do warm-ups before you draw, you will definitely see improvements in your finished product.

Check out the video below and you’ll see what I mean!


What is a Pose Catalog?

Well, I’m working on drawing my own comic book which means I’ll need to draw the figure in multiple ways. Why not build a pose catalog that I can easily reference if I ever get stuck or need a creative boost? I always warm up with a few poses to keep ideas fresh and exciting. Below is the example of poses I made from the video. If you look at the first two my anatomy is off. By the third try, I’m getting better at it and the fourth try is a huge improvement over the first one. Imagine if I kept going and drew eight poses? Twelve?Decide for yourself how many sketch warm-ups you want to do before you start drawing the figure for an actual artwork. I recommend a minimum of four to have any effect.

Remember no matter what you do have fun!