Drawing People From Imagination

I'd like to be able to draw people from imagination. This isn't a new goal. In 2020, I started a small list of (mostly creativity-oriented) goals for myself, and one of them was: "I want to be able to draw a realistic person in any pose". As of 2026, I haven't made much progress on this since adding it to the list.

And I'm not necessarily saying that right now is the time to do so, but I've been thinking a little bit about it recently. The specific driver of this is that I've had this stretch-goal project of creating a comic (or at least small snippets of a comic) for the plot of Terra Ignotta. And though I am not a beginner at drawing, most of my art is based on drawing from reference images, and I do not feel equipped to compose more complex scenes, poses, expressions, etc. I'd like to be able to. It's one of those areas that feels inevitable for me to eventually make progress in, or at least never stop wanting to make progress in.

I just now googled "how to learn to draw people from imagination" and read the single response to this person's question on this forum, which recommends these two resources:

• https://drawabox.com/ for general drawing skills
• Proko course (free) for figure drawing fundamentals: https://www.proko.com/course/figure-drawing-fundamentals

This is what I need to improve on:

(In defense of my art skills... See Completed paintings for a couple examples of reference-image people drawings I've done. The problem I'm solving for here is for imagination-drawn.)

Cool tip from chatgpt

## Create recurring benchmark drawings

Every month or every six weeks, draw the same kind of prompt without reference. Examples:

- A person sitting on the floor and reaching upward
- Two people arguing
- Someone running toward the viewer
- A figure carrying something heavy
- A three-panel conversation scene

Date the drawing and spend no more than 30–45 minutes on it. Do not correct the old version. Comparing successive attempts will reveal changes in gesture, construction, proportion, confidence, and storytelling.