We do know that one of the most iconic videogame franchises is Capcom´s classic Street Fighter. Its unrivaled position is due to amazing characters and great action. What’s more, we do love Street Fighter because of the vast array of heroes and villains it possesses. But the first and original of these heroes is Ryu.
In this tutorial, we would be drawing a Ryu in all his glory and we would do this in 9 easy steps. Each step should be followed strictly in order for you to arrive at a flawless and realistic final sketch.
Going on, you should note that before we get drawing the final art we would be creating a dummy. This would serve as a base for the creation of our final sketch. Finally, we will add some color to our drawing. Excited?! Let’s get drawing.
STEP 1: DRAWING THE TORSO
Using the image as a guide, our character’s torso would be drawn fin a 3/4 angle and from a slightly upper point of view. We will draw two vertical curved lines for the chest and the abdomen. The torso will be divided by a horizontal arch line connecting both vertical lines.
The hip area should be shaped small like a man’s underwear. Having drawn that, let’s go on to draw the legs.
STEP 2: DRAWING THE LEGS
Our character should be drawn on his feet with his legs apart. The legs should be started off like big tubes which gradually reduces as it gets to the knees, which are drawn as two horizontal lines. After the knees, the legs should extend out again and gradually get smaller till it gets to the ankles. After that, draw the feet as seen in the above picture. Lastly, complete the legs by drawing four horizontal lines on each leg. Two at the upper part of each leg, and two at the lower part of each leg. Having covered that, let’s take on drawing the arms.
STEP 3: DRAWING THE ARMS
Using the above picture as a guide Ryu´s right arm would be drawn raised with the elbow flexed and the left arm close to the body but the elbow also raised like it was holding something. The difference between both is the left arm is flexed towards the body meanwhile the right arm biceps is close to the torso, the forearm and hand are pointing upwards. The fist is also close like it was holding something.
Each arm should be drawn as a big tube that reduces as it gets to the elbow region.
STEP 4: DRAWING THE HEAD
Our character’s head would be drawn looking to the left in a 3/4 view. The head will be drawn like a sphere, with a vertical line dividing the face and a horizontal curved line marking where the eyes will be located.
I will like to stop here for a moment before I keep moving forward with this tutorial. I want to introduce you to the course that I made on “How To Draw Characters”. In this step by step course, I dive deep into the drawing principles I’ve been speaking about previously in this tutorial, plus many other techniques that will help you develop the skills necessary to draw professional level like characters. If you wanna know more about this course please click the image below.
STEP 5: DRAWING THE OUTFIT
STEP 6: DRAWING THE FINAL LINEART
For this stage, our dummy would be faded out slightly and the traces left would be used to draw the outfit. So go on and slightly fade the dummy out then draw the final line art on top.
If you wanna learn which are the Art supplies we use for drawing and painting you can visit the Recommended supplies and Recommended tablets sections.
STEP 7: PAINTING THE BASE COLORS
Here’s where our drawing gets exciting and colorful as we would be introducing the base color to our character. So pull out your light grey blue and paint the base color for the Gi. Once the Gi is colored, continue with the skin and use a light brown tone.
Other colors you should use is red, for the gloves and the hairband, and dark grey for the hair and the belt.
STEP 8: PAINTING THE SHADOWS
For this stage, we will paint some parts using a darker blue for the Gi shadowed areas. You should do a similar thing for the other parts of the character. Dark red for the glove´s shadows, a darker tone for the skin color, and black for the belt shadows.
The main light source will come from the top right side. The shadows will be painted on the left side of the character.
STEP 9: PAINTING THE LIGHTS
For the lights, we should do the reverse process that we did before. Use a brighter tone of each base color and brighten the areas that will be directly exposed to the main light source.
CONCLUSION
At this point, your drawing should be impressive. However, don’t call it done just yet. Practice is vital for mastery. So go over the above tutorial a couple of times more. In due time you would be able to draw any character of your choice without the need for a tutorial.
If you are interested in more free step by step drawing tutorials similar to this one, feel free to visit the Drawing Tutorials section.
