Welcome to the land of MUSCLES. Today we will thoroughly break down the muscular body type of male characters and figure out how to draw them with ease. Well, of course, nothing comes easy when drawing—but, we’ll find a way to make things simpler. Also, if you’re interested in more drawing tutorials, you can check out How To Draw Your Own Manga or Anime Character or if you want to add a head to your muscular body after this, you can also check out 8 Step Anime Boy’s Head & Face.
Table of Contents
I’m not gonna lie, coming up with resources for this blog is reminding me of Gou Matsuoka from Free! and her obsession with muscles. Not to mention how she’s adept with the knowledge of the different muscle groups. Well, that’s what we’re going to try today—to get familiar with the muscles and be like Gou Matsuoka, minus the obsession.
Drawing this kind of body type can help you understand anatomy better in a sense, because you end up comparing other body types and seeing which areas grow and how it differs. So, what you need to do is pull up different references on the muscular body. Study the body shape and how it looks. Next, think about what kind of body type you want to draw, and how exaggerated it will be—for example, you could want to draw muscles like Goku or like Joseph Joestar… or maybe you just want to try drawing a toned body? So, pick a certain body type, and let’s start drawing!
But for this blog, however, let’s go ahead and try this build—which is hard to describe but, as illustrated below this is what I drew from my gathered references of muscular male characters. If it helps, you can pull up medical diagrams and go through the basics of anatomy.
If you pull up the medical diagram, don’t get OVERWHELMED with all the muscles and all the names okay? Just think of it like its the Collosal Titan from Attack on Titan, and just look the muscles present there. We’ll go over some of the names later, so take a good look at the medical diagram and then you don’t have to look at it again.
Sketching The Body
The first step is to sketch the body, specifically the upper body that only includes the torso and shoulders. We ignore the arms for now. Remember, male bodies tend to have wider shoulders and narrow hips.
So, picture a triangle where the base of that shape serves as the length of the shoulders and the slopes represent the direction of the torso. Also, aside from a triangle, you can use a not-so-perfect square (this is probably a trapezoid) as a guide for a wider torso compared to a narrow shape–but make sure not to make the torso the same length as the shoulders.
You can also look at your body and see which portion is broader than the other, some people could have broader shoulders than their hips. While, some people can also have an equal length of shoulder span and the hips. Or even wider hips than the shoulders? So, keep that in mind and let us proceed to the land of muscles.
After getting the shape, you can sketch the outline of the body so you can get a clearer illustration of what the body roughly looks like. You can start with the shoulders, sketching them lightly along with the neck. After that, you can proceed to draw a bit more details of the body to get an estimate of where the muscles could go.
So, you’ll end up with a blocky sketch as seen in the drawing. Now, this is not the final drawing as we need to identify the muscle groups next.
Locating The Collarbone
The collarbone is an important step as it provides an indicator of where the chest and shoulders go. We wouldn’t want them way up too high, so placing the collarbone right is a must! This is because the collarbone is attached to the shoulder and creates a distinct separation of the neck muscles and the chest muscles.
The collarbone can be drawn in other ways, you can draw it like how I did or you if you have other references, you can draw them like that. However, as the other muscles may be optional to draw the collarbone must always be drawn—unless yor character is wearing a shirt over it then of course you don’t have to draw it.
Adding The Chest
Now, we move on to the chest muscles or the pectoralis major, or simply the pecs. By drawing two curved squares right below the collarbone, we have a base for the chest. You can pull up some references for this part as sometimes, shaping it can be a bit difficult. After sketching the base, you can erase the top part and clean the sketch a bit so you’ll get a better picture of the chest.
If you were to look at the previous section where the trapezoid and triangle shaped bodies were compared, you can look at how the chest muscles were different. You can either draw it like the trapezoid one or with the triangle one. Either way, as long as you make it cohesive with your drawing and that it makes sense, then have it your way!
Putting in the Abs
Now, for the trickiest part of the torso, the abs are like little bun–shaped muscles that take the center of the body right below the chest. But before we draw the buns, let’s draw some guidelines so we won’t go over the areas where the abs should be.
If you’re like me, and you struggle with this bit, then let’s go over it slowly. The first bun, you might want to do trial and error with it, because this becomes your basis on how the rest could look. Try to get a shape that looks good in your eyes and tweak it a bit if needed. Next, we proceed with adding the rest of the buns by replicating the same shape. It’s up to you with how many you want to put on your muscular body so exaggerate as much as you want!
The Shoulder Muscles
Before we proceed with the sketch, let’s clean up the initial drawing a bit. Erase some of the unnecessary lines and redraw the areas that were roughly sketched. At this point, you can take a short break and relax…get your creative juices back. You can also go back to the previous steps to see if you’re satisfied with those portions and proportions.
Now that everything is clean and to your satisfaction, let’s go add the shoulder muscles or the deltoids, which come off as soft hills on top that are connected to the collarbone and the neck. It’s important to know the proportions for the shoulders since there is some muscle build compared to an average build. So, you can eyeball the size and see if it’s not awkward—or you can pull up references and compare your drawing.
Drawing The Neck Muscles
Moving on to the neck muscles or the sternocleidomastoid, now it’s actually easy to draw on as the muscles are placed on the corner of the ear down to the center part of the collarbone.
The neck muscles aren’t drawn sometimes on certain body parts so it’s up to you to add this bit and see whether it matches your drawing. You don’t have to do what I did on this portion, as you can draw one line to represent it or just use shading over it.
Adding The Side Muscles
On to the side muscles or the serratus anterior and the external obliques. I know, it’s a mouthful but again we are channeling our inner Gou Matsuoka so we gotta know the names. The serratus anterior sits right at the sides and is just below the pecs, so you can draw some lines that create the shape. Beneath that, is the external obliques that sometimes aren’t drawn but here we are going to draw that with some lines on the side.
This part would be more prominent when your character has a more muscular body, where the muscles and veins are popping out. Wich would remind me of that one character where his body was so ripped but had a teeny tiny head… if you know that character, please enlighten me and leave a comment below!
Adding Details and Wrapping Up
After everything else, feel free to add more details if you feel like it. You can also try drawing the body at different angles so you can practice anatomy and get the feel for the overall drawing. By focusing on specific parts in the drawing and drawing them over and over again, pretty soon you’d be able to draw with ease.
You can also try coloring your drawing and see how shading works with the individual muscles on the body. Shading could also be applied if you don’t feel like coloring. You are welcome to go over the steps again and try a different approach to drawing the muscular body.
Once you are comfortable with drawing the muscular body, you can taking it up a notch and try drawing the muscular body in different poses. You can look up references and see how the body is able to take up shapes, compare details and see if you can replicate it on the drawing.
I remember how the Dragon Ball series really inspired the kids to draw muscular men and they’d end up having better drawn muscles than my pieces so… by having that inspiration to draw different body types I’m sure you’d be able to pick it up.
Conclusion
Drawing the muscular body is kind of like studying anatomy since we talked about drawing the different muscles in the body. If you find drawing this type of torso difficult, it’s okay—you can always try drawing different body types and see where you are comfortable. Just continue to practice until you’ve got it down, and then you’re welcome to try drawing new things to expand your knowledge and skill.
Pulling up different references and different guides could also further your drawing skills since you’re able to compare notes. By observing and learning about the various steps, you’re able to come up with a way that is essentially easier and simpler for you to do.
Coming with different methods can help you draw with ease and saves half of your time going over guidelines after guidelines. So, if you keep drawing the same thing, you’ll end up memorizing it and finding it easier to draw and replicate.
Aside from that, watching anime and observing the muscular characters there can also help you with the understanding of how that kind of body works. How it contorts, stretches, bends—the whole movement basically. You can also look at how other artists draw this kind of body and… understand how they make it really really really cool.
Annnnd, if you don’t feel like watching anime to understand the muscular body, then you can also rely on The Sims 4. Now, here me out because the Create-A-Sim (CAS) function is really fun to play with when it comes to experimenting with the body. You can try looking at videos about the sims and look at the body types there, or if you have access to the game then go ahead and try it out!
You’ll definitely see what I meant when trying to make proportions work. Because you’ll practicaly see how anatomy works in the size of a Sim character. Other than that, go have fun! Try out other methods when trying to study the muscular body!
If you have some tips of your own that you want to share, leave a comment down below and we can talk about it! Hope you enjoyed this one!
