Drawing People in Procreate: Stylized Character Illustration for Beginners
Iva Mikles · Illustrator | Top Teacher | Art Side of Life
Turns any human figure into simple shapes, taught head to toe with no faces required.
What you will learn
- Simplifying heads and necks into circles, ovals and teardrop shapes from front, three-quarter and side views
- Differentiating male and female proportions through neck width, shoulder width and chin size
- Building varied male and female hairstyles by sketching silhouette first, then details
- Constructing torsos and arms as tapered rectangles and tubes, with male vs female shoulder width
- Simplifying hands into a mitten shape with a thumb circle, from front and side angles
Standout ideas
- The mitten method for hands: block the palm as a rectangle or circle, attach the thumb as a separate half-circle, then thin the wrist and widen the knuckles
- Flip the canvas mid-sketch to catch proportion misalignments the eye gets used to
- Draw hair as a single silhouette shape first and add strands, waves and shadow details only after the outline reads correctly
Best for: Beginner digital illustrators who want a repeatable shape-based method for drawing stylized human characters from any angle.
This class delivers exactly what it promises: a systematic, shape-first approach to sketching stylized characters, broken into digestible body-part lessons with the teacher sketching alongside clear reasoning about proportion. It deliberately skips facial features and detailed rendering, so it suits character silhouettes and scene-setting illustration rather than close-up character art or full colouring technique. Procreate-specific, though the shape logic transfers to any drawing tool.