I have a fat character I want to draw but she ends up looking weird no matter how hard I try... :< Do you know any tutorials on how to draw larger people?
I can totally understand your frustration. We’re taught to draw thin bodies a lot more often and thoroughly than we’re taught to draw fat ones, so learning how to draw larger bodies can definitely be a struggle, even for fat artists. But I’ve rustled up some links that should hopefully prove useful to you and other artists dealing with the same problem.
Fat Drawing Tutorial:
Here’s a pretty good one that covers different fat body variations and includes larger fat girls: “Tutorial - Curves on Girls”
Once you get past the part about abs this one’s got some really good information and reference on how to draw how fat looks realistically: “Understanding Anatomy VII“ (that whole tutorial series looks to be helpful on drawing anatomy, so I recommend checking the other parts out too)
This one doesn’t cover larger fats, but it does have some good stuff about distributions of fat on the body and variations on fatness: “Varying Your Body Types”
Here’s a short, not-terribly-thorough one (that’s got some complaints in it on unrealistic depictions of fatness in fat-fetishistic art, just fyi), but which makes good points on incorporating gravity into depictions of fatness so the fat doesn’t look like balloons: “How To Draw Fat Women”
This one’s a short tutorial (that has minor problematic language) about how to draw waists that’s inclusive of smaller fat bodies. “Female Waist Tutorial”
A short tutorial about drawing hips, inclusive of smaller fat hips. Not a lot to it, but helpful to glance over. “Female Hip Tutorial”
“Drawing Fat on the Body is a video tutorial that covers some helpful advice on how to draw fat bodies building off of prior knowledge of drawing thin bodies. Doesn’t cover different types of fat bodies/fat distribution and has some other imperfections, but a decent beginner starting point. ” (contains some mild problematic language)
“How to Draw Fat Bodies” Here’s a short post with some good general tips to keep in mind when attempting to draw fat people.
Another short, general guide on drawing fat bodies, with some good example of different fat body types. “Guide to Drawing Fat Bodies”
A short guide with tips on drawing fat athletes/strong fat characters.
A basic tutorial on adding fat onto the general torso area of the body.
(One of the sadder parts of finding these was sifting through different tutorials and finding ones that were teaching how to draw really inaccurate or over-simplified fat anatomy, or included really fatphobic language or commentary in the tutorial =.=)
Fat Reference Photos:
This post links to a handful of helpful galleries of photo reference of fat women posing: “Re: Fat and Chubby Women Photo References”
Here’s a Site which contains lots of pictures of different women searchable by height, age, weight, etc. that looks really helpful: “My Body Gallery.com”
A site with a lot of great full-body pictures of people organized by their height and weight (referential to the bs BMI system, but still great art reference) “Cockeyed: Height / Weight”
Other Reference:
Otherwise, if you want to search for fat reference on tumblr, I’d suggest looking through tags and blogs that often contain selfies/photos of fat people, since when you’re trying to learn how fat actually looks, nothing is more accurate reference for it than the real thing.
HOWEVER, you must be respectful in your use of these tags or blogs for reference!!!! As in DO NOT draw people straight out of any photos you find and post your work unless you get permission from the subjects you’ve drawn and/or their photographers. If you do draw random people you see in the tag, then treat your drawings as practice/study and confine whatever you make to your sketchbook for your own eyes.
But I do wholly advocate looking at all sorts of images of fat people and really paying attention to all the different ways their fat manifests itself and looks, and then practicing drawing figures inspired by what you’ve observed.
(please note that some of these tags and blogs listed below may contain nudity/nsfw content:)
Tags containing fat selfies/photography: #fatshion, #fatspo, #fatspiration
Blogs containing fat selfies/photography: The Adipositivity Project, Fat Selfiesteem, Fat Grrrrl Selfies, Chubby Fatshion, Fuck Yeah Chubby Fashion, Chubby Bunnies, Chubby Guy Swag, Big Guy Flyy, Gorgeous Plus Lolita
Blogs containing art of fat or at least “not thin” people: Fat People Art, Fat Art
(If you see your blog linked to above and would rather it not be pointed to as a place to find reference of fat bodies, just let me know and I’ll take it off right away.)
Anyways, hope this helps! And if you know of, find, or make any more tutorials, references sources, etc., please do message me with the links to be added onto this post!!! I’ll update this as I find/receive more stuff to add.
(Updated: 5/31/15 with 8 new additions to the fat drawing tutorial and fat reference photo sections)