The human torso is a complicated collection of unique muscles that greatly affects how you carry yourself. Many artists will need to master drawing this vital figure in order to create realistic people in all of their artwork. Despite how tricky drawing a human torso might look. like many things, it can be broken down into some simple shapes. Once you know what shapes you can break the torso into, you can learn take these shapes and make them more defined to form it.
Instructions
1. Draw three circles to represent the jointed areas of the torso. Place these circles in a trianglular configuration. The two upper circles should be smaller and evenly spaced to represent shoulders. The larger circle below them should be centered between them and will represent the waist.
2. Now draw the bones of these joints. Draw a slightly curved line between the two "shoulders." Also draw the spine starting a little above the shoulders and move down to connect it with the lower circle. Make this line curved or straight depending on how you wish the character's posture to be.
3. Fill out the muscles on the figure, starting from the top and working your way down. Draw small shoulder pad-looking ovals over the circles on the shoulders to give them some actual shape. Then move down from the lower portion of these circles. Draw two upside-down teardrop shapes coming from each small circle down to the sides of the larger circle. Now connect each teardrop point with a small curve that moves up toward the shoulders.
4. Draw another ball-like shape that starts behind the tips of the tears and connects about halfway down the large circle. This shape will represent the lower abs, so it should be more boxlike than the shapes you drew in the last step, which will be the rib cage.
5. Erase your guidelines. Erase the starting circles that you drew, leaving only the outer lines that form the actual figure. You will be left with a very block-like representation of a torso.
6. Add details to this representation. Start from the top and smooth out any edges that seem too rough or sharp. Don't forget to make the chest area bulge out slightly, so it's not as thin as the rest of the torso. Draw a sharp line for the underside of the chest so that viewers can see that the chest is its own item and not just part of the abs. Add small circles for nipples and continue lower. Abs are drawn in two rows of small sausage-looking ovals with about eight ovals in each row. You can make these ovals wider or less defined depending on how much of a "six pack" you want to give the character.
