Yes, You Can Draw a Stick Figure
Why do grown adults insist they can not draw as well as a preschooler?
When I tell someone that I am an artist, more often than not they respond with “I can’t even draw a stick figure.” I’m here to tell you that anyone can learn how to draw.
As a certified art teacher, I happen to know from both anecdotal evidence and the Creative Curriculum for Preschool that drawing stick figures is a 3- and 4-year-old skill. Why, then, do grown adults continue to insist that they are not capable of drawing as well as a preschooler?
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When faced with a pencil and paper and pressed to attempt a stick figure, most adults will produce one because it is well within their ability to do so. The statement “I can’t even draw a stick figure” is more often the expression of a belief that “I can’t draw, I’ve never been good at it, and I’m afraid to really try.”
Art is a vast field with niches in abstract expressionism and various other non-representational “-isms”. If you want to draw realistically, you need to find an art instructor that has realistic drawing skills, and not all art instructors do.
So if you have tried learning how to draw in the past and failed, it’s not because you just don’t have “it”. It’s that you didn’t have access to a teacher with the skillset you were looking to acquire.
“If you want to draw realistically, you need to find an art instructor that has realistic drawing skills, and not all art instructors do.”
Luckily for you, I am an art teacher with representational drawing training and I am going to show you how to draw a stick figure. Not just any old stick figure, but a good stick figure that will help you draw realistically if you choose to pursue stick figures to their natural conclusions (i.e. full figure drawings).
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Hopefully, everyone reading this now 1) believes that they are capable of drawing a stick figure and 2) will give learning how to draw a stick figure an honest try. Good.
If you wish to draw a stick figure well, it is important to understand that the “sticks” really represent bones in the human skeleton, which would eventually be filled out with flesh to create a believable figure. In order for your drawing to have a believable feel to it, these “bones” need to be the right proportion to each each other. Otherwise, you might end up with some very fantastical looking beasts, but they won’t necessarily look human.
So how do you create a stick figure with good proportion?
This free slide presentation will show you step-by-step exactly how to draw a stick figure with good proportions where the “sticks” accurately represent the sizes of human bones in relation to the figure as a whole.
