How To Draw Ribs

How to draw Ribs

Seeing as how my pelvis tutorial seemed to be pretty helpful I figured I’d share how I draw ribs so easily.

Egg: The most important part of the skeleton.

It’s important to be aware of the way the spine curves, as spines are never straight (unless you’re trying to indicate a cartoony expression of surprise) so the spine look more natural and less stilted.

Most people aren’t going to care if you don’t draw the floating ribs/draw less than the ten normal ribs, however, I think the ribs would be noticeably lacking if you draw less than 6 pairs.

Having a few layers to get this right is always the best option. I find it useful to fill the empty spaces between the ribs on the sketch layer so it doesn’t start to blur together and you end up losing track of how many lines you’ve drawn.

I made the back ribs layer a different color to better show how it looks for you guys. In reality, I drew it black and edited the layer to make it teal but I also think it would be helpful to draw it in a different color than the front ribs so you can see what you’re doing better. I also think it’s good to mark the vertebrae as you go along on one side so it is easier to figure out where the ribs will connect to the front ribs and the spine for the other side - making it more symmetrical and aligned.

Looking at the ribcage can be a bit hard on the eyes so I recommend taking breaks if your art starts to crawl around and look like an optical illusion.

Hope my tutorial helps!

Comic by @chaoticdoodler-extra

Look at this goober

Vicious attack

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Mom left for work

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