Fraction Figure: How to Draw a Proportioned Person

Artists need spacial intelligence to know how to convert the 3D world to a 2D surface. They need to know how scale, proportion, and linear perspective work. That's math.  This short video shows how to make a figure that is eight heads high.

Elementary or middle school students who can draw a figure to illustrate their fictional writing, developing a character, making a comic book etc. They can use it to study history and the show the type of clothing people wore during a given time and place. They can represent a specific historical figure. They can design a costume out of recycled garbage for their environmental science class. OR students can just learn this skill to be a better artist. Draw and be happy.

My students' figure drawings for a fashion design assignment

What's In YOUR Closet?

For those who think that Art has nothing to do with their life, I'd invite them to look around them.  Every piece of junk mail, every web site visited, every bill board, every board game, every movie, T.V. show, theater production, every pieces clothing has involved a person with a visual art back ground. Graphic designers, industrial designers, fashion designers-all use the same tools: line, shape, color, value, texture, etc. They use the same rules: balance, emphasis, repetition, proportion etc.

And so my students looked at sketches from designers such as Ralph Lauren.  They learned the proportions of the human figure (or at least the idealized, 8 head high figure), and then they came up with their own fashion plate. Art isn't just for the galleries, it also
for the runways.