How to Draw Stick Figure Profiles

Knowing how to draw stick figure profiles is far more useful than simple “face-on” stick figures. However, it comes with a couple of challenges around perspective and foreshortening.

how to draw stick figure profiles

Your face-on stick figure is symmetrical, and you can see 2 eyes and ears, 2 arms and legs. However, as soon as your Stickies are at an angle to the viewer, the effects of perspective start to kick in and ‘distort’ things. What then to do? Angled poses are  visually more dynamic, and therefore totally desirable, so we need a quick solution.

We call this distorting effect of perspective foreshortening

Once you become aware of it you’ll see it all around you, every day! The good thing is that by the end of this page you’ll also have a sense of  how it works and how better to capture it to create livelier stick figure drawings.

Watch the video to see how to draw stick figure profiles with perspective, so that you can go on to draw your own ‘Stickies’ well from all angles.

How to draw stick figure profiles — look out for these things in particular

  1. the effects of foreshortening on symmetry
  2. which leads to changes in the apparent length of the horizontal hip and shoulder lines
  3. and means that parts of the body on the farther side from the viewer seem smaller, or cannot be seen at all

Something still bugging you?

There is always more learning to explore, so if you’re still not 100% clear about how to draw stick figure profiles (or you have a question about something totally unrelated to this video), I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment and who knows? Your question could spark off an exciting new video series!