How to Draw a Superhero

 

Who has never dreamed of being a superhero at least once in their life?

These mythical characters that have accompanied the childhood of thousands of people and continue to inspire generations, whether they are from team DC or Marvel, all have one thing in common: their build. They are tall, muscular, and strong (with a few exceptions...) and above all, they have the same foundation.

 

In this article, I will teach you how to draw a base that can be reused to draw lots of different superheroes, whether they exist or not ;)

First, I will show you how to draw the base of a superhero's body, and then I will show you how from this base, you can draw any character. For example, I have chosen Green Lantern and Flash.

 

 

 

 

DRAWING THE BASE OF A SUPERHERO

 

We will start by drawing a sketch of a head.

A superhero usually has a strong, square jaw.

You will therefore make a circle for the base of the skull and a jaw with sharp angles.

 

 

 

Next, we will define the character's pose by placing a central line that will act as the spine.

I've decided to make my hero from a 3/4 front view, so I will extend the spine to the right.

I make a "heart" to represent the pelvis and give solidity to my skeleton.

 

 

 

Next, I'm going to draw the legs. I will draw simple lines for the bones and circles for the joints.

I will create one leg viewed from the front and another viewed from the side.

 

 

 

 

To finish my skeleton, I'm adding the arms.

I start by drawing a horizontal line which will be a guide for the clavicles, then the shoulder, and finally the arm itself. My hero will have clenched fists.

 

 

 

Now that my skeleton is finished, I will move on to shaping the body and drawing the muscles.

I start by redrawing the head and adding ears.

 

 

 

 

Then, I draw the outside of the arms, making sure to greatly exaggerate the muscles.

Then I draw the inside of the arms as well as the beginning of the torso.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm adding hands. To find out how to draw a hand, I encourage you to check out our article on our blog!

I decided to clench my fists because it's the simplest thing to draw, and it's generally part of a superhero's pose.

 

 

 

 

I continue the torso and draw the thighs, always greatly exaggerating the shape of the muscles.

 

 

 

 

I finish with the calves and feet.

At this stage of the drawing, the skeleton is no longer necessary, so I can erase it.

 

 

 

 

To finish the base of the body, I add some details like drawing the muscles.

Something we often see in superheroes is that, to show their physical strength, illustrators tend to really exaggerate the drawing of muscles, even if sometimes it seems like the character is going to explode ...

 

 

 

 

And finally, the face. I draw a neutral face, usually the hero's face is hidden by a mask. If you want to read an article to learn how to draw a man's face in general, you can find this on our blog ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUPERHERO DRAWING: GREEN LANTERN

 

Your body base is now finished! From this step, you can have fun drawing any superhero, adapting physical characteristics if needed, or even create your own superhero!

I'm going to show you how to start from this basis and draw 2 superheroes. I'll start with Green Lantern.

 

I will start my character by modifying the head.

Green Lantern wears a mask and has visible hair.

So I start by drawing the hair and then I add the mask that just covers the eyes.

 

 

 

 

Then, I draw his costume over the body base.

I therefore define the different parts of the costume such as the top, gloves, pants and boots.

 

 

 

 

To finish, I change all my lines to black. My Green Lantern is done.

 

 

 

 

If you wish, you can fill in some areas of the drawing in black to give a more "comic book" effect to your drawing.

I'm going to do Green Lantern with flat black and Flash just with a black line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUPERHERO DRAWING: FLASH

 

To create Flash, I start with the body base that I had drawn and once again start with the head.

I am drawing his mask, which, unlike Green Lantern's, covers almost the entire face and only leaves the eyes and mouth visible.

His mask has two small lightning bolts on the sides and his ears are covered.

 

 

 

 

 

Like with Green Lantern, I define the different parts of the Flash costume.

His costume is a full-body suit that features some decorations (lightning bolts) all over it and a pair of boots.

 

 

 

 

I add details to the costume and erase unnecessary lines.

 

 

 

 

I draw the eyes, I go over all my lines in black and my drawing of Flash is finished!

 

 

 

 

With this article, I have shown you that starting from the same base, you can draw several different characters.

Keep your body bases and have fun varying them to create lots of different characters, it's an enjoyable exercise that can be done with many different franchises (like Disney for example).

 

 

 

Illustrator and writer: Coralie