If You Don’t Know This, Your Figure Will Look Flat

This might sound like a very basic idea.

But it’s also something
people repeatedly get wrong in drawing.

So it’s worth going over once.

Have you ever finished a figure drawing
and thought:

“Why does this look like a paper doll?”

I run into this all the time.

The proportions look right.
The pose is similar.

But something feels off.

It looks flat.

And if you look closely,
you’ll find the reason.

The Clue Is Always the Same

• Belt line

• Pants line

• Clothing edges

They are all
straight lines.

Not wrapping.
Just sitting flat on the surface.

The moment you see this,
you realize:

One Simple Fix

Try thinking like this:

“The body is a cylinder.”

Once you see the cylinder,
the rest becomes easier to understand.

Lines like belts or clothing edges
wrap around that cylinder.

Try thinking like this:

“This line wraps around the body.”

Then naturally,
those lines stop being straight.

They become curves.

That one shift alone
creates space.

Do Curves Stay the Same?

No.

They change depending on
your eye level.

From above → curves go downward
From below → curves go upward

Same figure.
Different space.

Distance Changes Everything

There’s another key factor:

Distance.

When you’re close:

• The front gets bigger

• The back gets smaller

That’s why selfies feel
dynamic and exaggerated.

When you step back:

The distortion reduces,
and the space feels stable.

Try This

Put one fist forward
and one behind.

The closer one appears much larger,
while the one behind becomes smaller.

When objects are close,
small changes in distance create strong differences in size.

As the distance increases,
those differences become less noticeable.

This is how we perceive depth in space.

Final Thought

This might sound obvious.

You might even feel like
this is too basic to matter.

But when we draw from reference,
we often focus on small parts—

a line, a contour, a detail—

and lose sight of the bigger structure.

The space.

As poses become more complex,
those wrapping angles change,
and the direction of those curves shifts with them.

But it’s easy to ignore that
and default back to flat lines.

I still catch myself doing this.

And every time,
the result is the same.

The drawing loses depth.

No matter how complex the pose looks,
it still exists within a simple structure.

A volume.

A cylinder.

Once you start seeing that,
even complicated forms begin to make sense.

And your drawing becomes more solid,
more grounded,
and more convincing.

Thanks for reading.

If you have questions,
send them to me by email.

If there’s a topic you’d like me to cover,
feel free to include that as well.

Tools I Used

All drawings in this post were made using:

• Pencil Brush Set

You can find them in the link below.

👉 Get the Brushes

If you’ve been enjoying these breakdowns,
you can check out the brushes I use here:

👉 https://9brookskim.gumroad.com/l/sxbdjw