Drawing Help

[AdventureSerum]

Can anyone tell me correct proportions for drawing various ages of children. Drawing small adult proportions certainly doesn't work, and when I try to just wing it everything just looks stupid. I have a few drawing books, but they all only seem to have adult proportions. So anyway, care to help me out?

[mr_pikachu]

Well, it depends a lot on what style of artwork you're doing. As an example, I read a cartooning book awhile back that had the height of the head equal to the width (and sometimes greater width than height), larger eyes that were a little lower on the face than normal, and the ratio between the heights of the head and body as around 1:2 or 1:3 (don't remember which... it's been awhile).

But I'm sure it'd probably be much different if you were working on a realistic image, or manga style, or something like that. So what type of artwork are you attempting?

[Phoenixsong]

Hmgrr. I can give you the basic proportions in heads. I'm not that great at overall humanoid anatomy, but I can at least keep these proportions straight.

Baby: Head is 1/2 to 1/4 of the entire body; 1/2 is more cartoony, yes. 1/4 makes the baby rather tall, by comparison, but at this point it depends more on your style. Babies can be kinda lanky, heh.

Average child: Head is around 1/3 to 1/5 of the entire body; again, the larger the head in comparison, the cartoonier the look.

Average adult (although I suppose you already know this): Head is 1/6 to 1/7 of the entire body; females are generally 1/6. Unless you're going for super-stupid-cartoony, that proportion is roughly the same for both cartoons/anime/manga and realistic work.

I've got plenty of drawing books, so if you needed more than that I should be able to look it up. It'll be easier to find children's proportions in a manga book or something, though. Apparently children don't make very good subjects in more realistic art. *shrug*

[AdventureSerum]

Well, the style I'm trying to work with isn't quite reallistic and not quite cartooney. Sort of in between. I'm trying to get roughly reallistic proportions, but I'm also willing to stretch the bounds of whatever a little. So uh, did that answer your question?