Manga Drawing Tutorials

Manga is a highly regarded art form in Japan. Manga artists are highly respected not only for their skill but also for their imagination and creativity.

To draw manga, one would have to study the characteristics of manga images. Most people who wants to learn how to draw manga are usually attracted to some characters in a manga series. Without knowing it, they're not only attracted to the physical form of the manga character, they're also drawn to the personality of the character.

Manga pictures are not hard to draw once you understand its basic characteristics. And here they are.

Firstly, manga characters are adorable looking. This cuteness is defined by extremely large eyes, an almond shaped face, and a very small mouth. In fact, the faces of manga characters can look very similar, and they're differentiated mostly by their elaborate hair, dressing and accessories.

The manga face is made up of very basic shapes. So there's very little I can recommend here except to practice, practice, practice. If you can master drawing one manga face well, you'll be able to draw other manga faces as well.

The key here is to be able to capture the elaborate hair. Its not uncommon to see manga characters with long hair. Many fine lines are required to draw a fine head of hair, so do pick a sharp drawing tool for this purpose.

The dressing and accessories of a manga character is a statement of who the character is. So do not ignore these fine details. Spiritual characters often have "floating" pieces of cloth around them (e.g. cloak, scarf, etc).

Warriors almost always carry some kind of fancy weapon such as swords, spears, and so on. These weapons, together with the clothing, make-up the entire manga character.

Knowing this, the next time you draw a manga character, pay special attention to the hair, clothing and weapons of the character.