Anatomy of the Human Body
Torso(163 Lessons)
0% completed
Arms(101 Lessons)
0% completed
Legs(107 Lessons)
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How to Draw and Shade the Human Torso
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300K
Mark as Completed
How to Draw and Shade the Human Torso
Lesson by
300K
Mark as Completed
Newest
Sofi
29d
Here´s my attempt! It was super tough but also super fun. Now I can tell I streched out his torso too much LOL. Feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Samuel Sanjaya
2mo
My process of this longer figure drawing. I attempted this before watching the demo. I wonder how proko can spread charcoal powder as smoothly as in the video, mine was hard to spread and seems to immediately stick into the paper.
Any feedback/critiques will be greatly appreciated.
Myles Goethe
7mo
Peter Tinkler
7mo
This is my contribution to the human torso shading exercise. I decided to try my own source material, but I did watch the above video and found it extremely helpful.
This is a charcoal sketch of a sculpture, Heracles and the Nemean Lion, from the Barber Institute in Birmingham (one of the local galleries near where I live). The main focus is the torso of course, but I admit I was drawn to the arm muscles as well. There's a bit of exaggeration and extra tonal work for drama and effect, and I did take a couple of liberties with the source material, which I hope is acceptable. I've included my general process, and my reference.
Steve Lenze
7mo
Hey Peter,
This is a cool reference that has a lot of tonal variation that gives it a nice 3D feel. unfortunately this statement: "There's a bit of exaggeration and extra tonal work for drama and effect, and I did take a couple of liberties with the source material." Makes it impossible to critique. All the things I would say need attention is covered by that statement.
I guess what you have to ask yourself is: what am I trying to achieve. To create an accurate drawing using the rules of light hitting an object, or, to do it the way I want. No judgement, either way is fine, it just makes it hard to critique.
If you want some help understanding how light works and to achieve accuracy, let me know and I'll go over this with you :)
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Sarvesh Gupta
9mo
Here's my attempt of the human torso. I'm still kinda new to shading so not that good at finishing yet. Might reattempt it later. Feedbacks are welcome
Steve Lenze
9mo
Hey Sarvesh,
I can see your drawing is pretty good, the angles are good and the gesture feels pretty solid. The waist and ribcage area are a little small so always check your proportions.
As far as your rendering is concerned, it is clear that you are confused by all the values presented in the reference. My solution to you is to ignore all the values you see by squinting until all you can see is two values- dark and light. Then, fill these values in and ignore all the rest. When you can do this successfully, then you can start adding middle values, dark accents and highlights. I did a quick demo to show you what I mean, hope it helps :)
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Lars Trunin
11mo
Did it before looking at Stan’s demo. It’s a humbling experience — to learn how much you still have to learn.
Also, I think I need to upgrade my paper. It was really fighting against the Conte pencil.
Ernesto Palma
11mo
That´s a great thing about practice, it shows you what you need to improve, so you can focus on that for the next practice and so on. If we already had all the skills developed and knowledge memorized, we wouldn´t be studying! lol I do like that you were willing to go all the way through even with difficulty, great effort bud!
necplusprocess
1yr
hello, just finished my torso drawing, any feedback appreciated
Steve Lenze
1yr
Hey necplusprocess,
Nice job on your drawing. I went ahead and did a quick sketch to show you some of the things I noticed. I hope it's helpful :)
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@helenkwok
1yr
25/7/2022
(1.5hr)

@kugeltisch
1yr
dayum, looks great
Bartłomiej Wójcik
2yr
Just finished
Romain Decotte
2yr
Hello :)!
I have just finished drawing and shading the torso :)). I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process - thank you @Stan Prokopenko! I have attached my prep work - measurements, values and a thumbnail. I did it using a B charcoal pencil as I did not have an HB one. I find shading quite complex and challenging and still have plenty to learn. I would be most grateful if I could get some feedback @Jesper Axelsson. Onto the back muscles now :)!
Happy Easter,
Romain
2yr
Hi @Romain Decotte, nice drawing! Great job with structure and anatomy and following the process Stan suggested!
- "I find shading quite complex and challenging and still have plenty to learn"
I found shading to be hard too :) I didn't pay much attention to it the first few years. My goal was to learn how to draw Tarzan 🍌🦍, so all my focus went into gesture, structure and anatomy. It's only the last two years that I've been digging into shading.
May I suggest something? If your goal is to be able to do work that involves shading and composition with light (basically any work except unrendered 2d animation maybe), I think I would actually recommend you to learn more about shading and composition, rather than learning more anatomy at the moment.
This drawing and the work in your previous posts show that you already have a solid grip on gesture and form. If you can smack basic shading on top of that you'll be able to create awesome work, that I think will even surprise yourself. Right now, the shading weakens your drawings.
I made the "mistake" of ignoring shading in the beginning. It was not a waste of time, I learned a lot of other stuff, but without knowledge of shading, I couldn't do much beyond line and wire frame drawings. Just learning the very basics of shading has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me.
The course that really opened it up for me was Joseph Todorovitch's course From Painting to Canvas on NMA https://www.nma.art/courses/from-paper-to-canvas/ It showed me that when you know gesture and structure, shading is pretty easy; you map out shade and shadow, fill it in with an even tone, soften the form edges and keep edges of cast shadows sharp.
I took Joseph's course during the winter and I'm currently practicing value studies, since I felt like that was my weakest point.
If you want to dive deeper into shading (get answers on questions you might have, learn about values and how to invent light with even more control) Dorian Iten has a course called The Shading Course – Fundamentals of Realism, Light & Shadow (you can also find it on his website if a monthly membership suits you better https://www.theshadingcourse.com)
Hope this helps :) Feel free to ask if you have any questions about my suggestion!
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Mari
2yr
The Human Torso shading attempt.
Thieum
2yr
Torso drawing attempts
Sita Rabeling
2yr
Second attempt. I tried to use the right paper and charcoal pencil, but found it not smooth. Also the charcoal powder didn’t spread that nice. Must be my mistake.
And I think I overworked it… But it’s great to be able to see and follow Stan’s process of this image.
Sita Rabeling
2yr
First attempt. I love the process of the stages.
CHARLES DEIGHAN
2yr
Here's my Torso Drawing and Shading Assignment. Not terribly happy with it. I think I got the proportions right but the shading kind a got away from me. Critiques welcomed, thanks.
Sai Linn Aung
2yr
Shading Human Torso

Nicole Lee
2yr
Hello, I did a quick sketch that involved gesture, anatomy, and two value lay-in study imitating Lane Brown's style. However, the overall drawing looks a bit more like comic than traditional style. Below is what I think I could change next time:
- introduce more straights to the figure
- varying the line width more, both core shadow and the figure outline
What do you think? It would be greatly appreciated if someone can provide critiques on this :)

Dawn Li
2yr
Hi! I'd like to hear some advice :)
Marco Sordi
2yr
2021/13/6. Good morning. I've just finished my Torso. As You can see I used a different reference pic but I followed the general principles that Stan explained in his video. I usually don't tag instructors because they are very busy and I don't want to steal their time but since this drawing is the final assignment for this section I'd like to have a professional opinion. Dear @Stan Prokopenko Sensei and @Bradwynn Jones Sensei when you have time and if you see this post I'd like to hear your opinion and have some advice if is possible. Thanks and have a good day.
Holly Laing
2yr
Hi everyone! Here's my take on the torso drawing. I followed along with Stan as best as I could and attempted to make the image look as if it had been illustrated with graphite (I painted it on photoshop with some textured brushes). Any feedback/critique would be awesome. Thanks in advance!
2yr
Great work! The drawing looking a little to close to being metallic or like the silver surfer which just means some of the values on the dark side are competing with the mid-tones on the light side. When I squint down and look at the drawing it seems like the pec muscle (on the shadow side of the body) is a bit too light over on the shadow side. It may help to add a bit more value to that area to keep it in the value hierarchy.
Maybe take a look at some of the muscle shapes and try to create more variation in shapes like Stan did in his drawing. Variation helps avoid that over-organized look in things. This is a challenge for us especially when learning anatomy as we are organizing things to learn them. But if you look how Stan used variation like in the serratus muscles for example we can see how they look natural and spontaneous vs organized and all having the same shape. It's a small detail but added up throughout a drawing it will make all the difference. Your drawing is very well set up already that I think it would be an easy fix to create those variations in edges and shadow shapes. Great work and I hope that made sense.
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João Bogo
2yr
Pretty good! Good proportions and the forms are sculpted well enough.
There's some things I think you can improve:
_ The pec in shadow: you can darken the shadow halftone, It's a bit too light I think. I would add to the realism if you play down the forms in the shadows. Same thing in the face. Everything you did on the torso seems so intentional that the designs inside the shadows in the face feel sloppy in comparison. Since this is a torso study, darkening these areas would made the lighted areas pop out more.
- I feel that you exaggerated the tendon in the triceps too much and it's kinda distracting. Review the lesson on the triceps. Even in the reference I see more a flat area than a hole.
- Vary your design also. At the side of the torso you're using a series of curves to describe the anatomy. Mix a few little straights in to unify the design and look for overlaps to give more depth.
- Work more on the transition between core shadow to half tone. I feel that you did a good job in some areas like the pecs but at the lower abs, for example, the transition is a little too sudden.
- You can put a dark element in the background near the lighted torso to make it pop out more too.
- The last thing is about value range. The values in the light are very bright. I feel that for that intensity of light you almost wouldn't see a thing in the shadows. I think the whole thing would be more unified if the light values were a little more dark in general. But that's up to taste, anyway try doing value studies where you vary the range of the values in dark and light and observe what feels more natural to you.
That's it, very good job!
Keep drawing as I would like to see more from you.
Best Regards
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About instructor
Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.