Common Mistakes of Drawing Breasts
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Common Mistakes of Drawing Breasts
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Rob Montgomery
These are from a while back now, I think I focused a bit too much on shading over the anatomy and gesture. I also got carried away with working on faces and other areas not relevant to the excercise so definitely need to stay on task more. Some of these were done before watching the examples and some after. Any critique would be welcome.
LESSON NOTES

mmhmmm… So, you clicked on the episode about breasts. How surprising…

Hello my name is Stan Prokopenko, you’re watching Proko. We’re gonna start with don’ts and then move onto the do’s of drawing breasts. I know I’m a guy teaching this, but realize that I have the breast of intentions.

Common Mistakes

Breasts come in all shapes and sizes naturally. Multiply that by aging, implants, and make-up, and then again by different types of bras and clothing, and there’s a lot of ways they can look.

breast variation

With so much variation, it’s easier to say what you should never do than what you should always do. So here are a list of “oh god please stop drawing breasts like this.”

sphere vs teardrop shape

A lot of these mistakes come from thinking of the breasts like spheres or cones, but that’s not true. Breasts are not rigid. They’re soft, teardrop-shaped forms that hang off the ribcage.

1. Air-Balloon Boobs

The #1 mistake? “Air-Balloons”! People seem to think of breasts as simple spheres all the way around. They show a rounded mass at the bottom and top of the breast.

In truth, breasts do not have a round top plane. They taper to be thinner towards the collarbones.

They’re fuller at the bottom because of gravity pulling them down, like a hanging water balloon.

The only time you’ll see top cleavage is from a powerful push-up bra.

Or implants. Or make-up. Or Photoshop…

You can stylize the breasts however you choose, but you should at least start with reality, and work your way out from there.

air baloon boobs
2. Squished Boobs

Another common mistake is drawing the breasts squished together in the middle. There’s a natural separation between the breasts, about 1 to 3 cm in width. Of course, some bras actually push the breasts together, but at least when drawing the nude figure, leave some space in-between.

squished and non squished
3. Nipple Size

Mistake #3 is thinking that the larger the breast, the larger the nipple. Not true. There is every kind of combination. Large breasts with large nipples, small breasts with large nipples, small breasts with small nipples.

4. Anti-gravity Boobs

Now, the final mistake I want to mention is super bizarre. Air-Balloons, okay, they’re supposed to be “sexy,” whatever.

But this?

This is just weird. Anti-gravity boobs! You see this a lot when action girls puff their chests out.When a woman puffs her chest out, her nipples are not going to reach for the sky. Breasts don’t have any muscles to point them upward. The version on the right is much more accurate. Breasts hang off the ribcage. Tilt the ribcage all you want, but all breasts care about is gravity.

anti gravity breasts

Now that you know the common mistakes of drawing breasts, it’s time to learn how to draw them correctly. In the next lesson we’ll look at the form and motion of the breasts.

motion and form preview

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ASSIGNMENTS

Assignment: Draw the Breasts

The assignment for this lesson is to do some quicksketch gesture drawings. Focus on how to position and motion of the body affects the shape of the breasts. And of course, don’t forget about the pec muscle under the breast tissue. I’ve provided some reference photos in the link below. If you’re not sure how to do a gesture drawing, refer back to the gesture lesson in the figure drawing course. Grab your breast pencil and bust out some drawings! Man, the puns are really racking up. I gotta milk it for all it’s worth.
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