How to Make Human-Shaped Wooden Gifts: Finishing Up the Drawing

Hey everyone! So far, we’ve walked through how to make human-shaped wooden gifts from scratch—teaching beginners how to handle body proportions, head and joint sketching, and more. This will be the final post in our drawing tutorial series, so let’s finish up the little wooden figure we’ve been working on!

At this point, you might be wondering—what about those key joint positions we talked about earlier? Why didn’t they come into play just yet? Well, that’s because the figure is clothed, and all the joints and important body points are actually expressed through the folds and direction of the clothing. So when you get to the final step of drawing in the clothing folds, those joint references become super helpful.

Now, we’re going to use an 11cm tall, 5cm wide, and 3cm thick block of wood. And here’s a little challenge for our fans: since we’ve already done quite a few tutorials on how to make human-shaped wooden gifts, we’d love for you to use the drawing methods we’ve shared to sketch this reference image onto the 11cm wood block. You’ll learn best by actually doing it, and we hope this helps you feel more confident in the process.

The method for sketching an 11cm figure is exactly the same as for the 15cm one we talked about earlier. The only difference is that the four-and-a-half sections we used before now become three sections, and the last centimeter is for the feet.

All you need to do is slightly shorten the torso. The proportions of the head stay the same.

Start by figuring out the shoulder-to-head width ratio. Use guide lines to outline the head, leaving 0.5cm of space on each side. Sketch the head, then divide it into three equal vertical parts—this will naturally help you locate where the ears should go.

Following the reference image, draw the character’s side-parted hairstyle. Then set the width of the nose.

Once the head is done, we move on to the body. First, find the pubic bone. Remember what we talked about before? The pubic bone marks the halfway point of the body. Once you find it, you can sketch the bottom edge of the outer jacket and then draw the sleeves.

After extending the sleeve, you can add the pocket. We moved the hand position inwards a bit because when the body was shortened, the width naturally needed to be adjusted inward too.

Now we’re just going to give you the keywords—it’s your turn to draw the rest of the wooden figure directly onto the block! Here’s what you should sketch, in order:       

• The dividing line of the outer jacket
• The lower edge of the vest
• The angled lines for the shoulder and arms
• The edge of the jacket
• The dividing lines between the arms and the body on both sides
• The outer edge of the pants
• The cuffed pant legs
• The feet and hands

And just like that, our 11cm wooden figurine sketch is done. Notice something? No matter how tall your human-shaped wooden gift is, once the head is in place, you just need to find the pubic bone, and from there, most of the body’s edge lines can be figured out. We suggest trying a few different poses and sketching them out to see if you’ve really got the hang of this method.