Limbs drawn as sausage outlines with no overlap or foreshortening
“The arms and legs look like inflated flat balloons with no sense of depth.”
What is happening
Limbs are rendered as flat, symmetrical tubes meeting end to end. There are no overlapping contours to indicate whether the forearm or thigh is closer to the viewer.
Drawing continuous outer silhouettes flattens three-dimensional form onto the page. Without T-junction overlaps where one muscle group passes in front of another, foreshortening and spatial depth disappear.
The 30-second test
Check your line work at the elbows and knees; if all lines meet at closed points rather than crossing over each other, depth is missing.
How to fix it
- Break the limb into simple overlapping cylinders or eggs rather than single continuous outlines.
- Identify which section is closer to the viewer's eye.
- Draw the contour of the nearer section wrapping in front of the further section with a clear T-junction.
- Add curved cross-contour marks across the form to reveal the limb's roundness.
Can it be saved? Rescue
Strengthen the forward contour line where joint forms meet so it visibly cuts in front of the receding segment behind it.
Drill: Overlapping Cylinder Chains
About 15 minutes. You need:
- felt-tip pen or ink
- paper
Draw three chains of overlapping cylinders bending toward and away from you. Ensure every joint uses an unambiguous overlapping edge to create foreshortening.
Background reading
General teaching sites on this subject. They are a reading list, not page-level citations for this advice.
The advice is a generated synthesis of common teaching practice and has not been checked line by line against any source; treat times and difficulty as estimates.