4 Tips to Mastering Proportion | Take Your Concept Art Drawing Skill to the Next Level!

Struggling with proportions in your concept art? You’re not alone! Many artists fall into the trap of eyeballing their drawings, leading to wonky figures and unrealistic results. Here are 4 key techniques to help you master proportion and elevate your concept art. But before you drive into your creativity and develop unique characters or environments, you need a solid fundamentals which we will help you with, in our MAGES Institute’s Diploma in Concept Art program.

Reference It Up!

Always use reference images! This can be a photograph or even a real-life object. Having a reference allows you to constantly compare your drawing and make adjustments to ensure accurate proportions.

Instead of diving straight into details, start by sketching basic shapes to build your subject. Think circles, squares, cylinders, and triangles. This approach helps you establish proper proportions before getting bogged down in intricate details.

The Ruler Trick: Measure It Out!

Here’s a valuable technique: Use an imaginary ruler with a chosen unit of measurement. You can use multiples or divisions of this unit. Common unit sizes include 1, 2, and 3, as well as halves and thirds. Keep it simple! For example, when drawing a rhino, you could use the rhino’s height as one unit. The length might be two units, requiring two perfect squares. Then, divide the first square into thirds to establish the proportions for the head and body. Smaller parts can be measured using fractions of the original unit.

Embrace the Negative Space

Pay attention to the negative space in your reference image, the empty areas around your subject, In this case, we use the Rhino again as the example in the image below. Focusing on negative space can help you avoid getting overwhelmed by details. You can block in the negative space shapes or simply mark them around your subject to ensure everything is positioned and proportioned correctly.

Bonus Tip: Practice Makes Perfect!

Lasly, don’t get discouraged if your first attempts aren’t perfect. Mastering proportion takes time and practice. Keep refining your skills, and you’ll see steady improvement over time.

This blog post only scratches the surface of mastering proportion. In the next blog, we will explore the difference between 2D and 3D sketching and how understanding a subject’s form and structure can help you draw it from any angle, so stay tuned!