Proportion – How the size of different parts relate to each other

To remember what proportion means, recall the following mnemonic: 

If you provide different portions (proportion) of a body, you can make different relatives (relate).

In art, and especially drawing, proportion comes in to play in a number of different ways. One of these is the proportion of people or objects, or any other elements in your drawings, in relation to each other. For example, as you can see below, if the proportions of a group of people are incorrect, it makes them appear the wrong size. All of the characters in the line up need to be proportionate to one another.

The proportions of individual objects or people will also change the overall image. When looking at people, the proportions of features on a face, and the proportions of the torso and limbs on a body all affect how stylised a drawing is, and changes the character completely.

In the images below, all the features on the faces are the same, but the proportions of the features in relation to each other are different. As you can see, this affects the overall appearance of the character.