Being able to draw people is at the heart of great visual storytelling, visual communication and any type of graphic facilitation when you are working live with a group.

The key reason? Drawing people that your audience can connect with creates empathy. It creates a connection as people can see themselves in that story. It opens up different neural pathways in our brains in a way that text by itself never can.

It’s why I have worked so hard to find a simple way of how to draw people that anyone can do. Yes, that’s right – anyone, including you!!

After attending one of my Learn Graphic Facilitation Workshops, I spent some time with master film maker, keynote speaker and video magician Julian Mather and we explored just how easy it is to create storyboards using my simple how to draw people techniques.

How to Draw People

Stick figures just don’t cut it. The reason being? NO ONE LOOKS LIKE A STICK FIGURE!

As such, when you use them in your story board or your visual communication, your audience doesn’t connect to them.

By using shapes for bodies instead of sticks, we can transform stick man into a real human. Hurrah!

Most importantly, these people can now be animated. Their arms and legs can move and create emotion and connection. There is a story, people are drawn in and your person can then tell a story.

What I like about this approach is that learning to draw people becomes a productivity tool. You can communicate ideas and stories in a few short minutes and save so much time as opposed to typing those ideas out OR trying to put them into a PowerPoint presentation with just more text squashed into squares.

I have never met anyone who isn’t interested in being more productive.

So, make sure you give this a go and ignore your creative Ogre that tells you not to.

If you would like to learn how to be an awesome graphic facilitator and make visual communication part of your communication and facilitation tool belt, join one of my Graphic Facilitation Public Workshops.

Here’s to a more creative world.