The Amazing Read

Welcome to the State Library of Queensland’s Summer Reading club, How to Draw Manga section.

Part 1

The 1^st part of this 5 part Blog will help you develop a basic understanding of how to draw Manga where you will be going through a crash course of the fundamental building blocks in drawing a character.

When you first begin to draw a Manga character you should think about what kind of character they are, be it evil or good, a mutant or a creature, a spirit or an alien and so on. It is a great way to build a feeling for your character and might be helpful when creating them. The character exist because of something that they do, you want your character to be the best! And not some random curled up in a ball with a giant hat hiding away in a dark corner.

To create a character with good proportion you have to first understand how proportion works. The image that follows is a quick example of head to height ratio. Using head heights as a guide is a useful tool to ensure a pleasing proportion when drawing up humanoid characters. The following example is a character that is 7 head heights. This is the steps used to create this Manga character, the first step taken here was to draw a line vertically up that was equal to 7 head heights. Seeing as this is an example to show the height the character isn’t in a dramatic pose.

Your typical hero character will be around 8 head heights, this isn’t saying the characters has to be 8 head heights, it is just saying this is the proportion relation to the other parts of the body. That being said you should experiment with different proportions once you’re comfortable with standard characters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So with this in mind draw up a character so that it fits within the scale between 3-8 head heights. 6-7 is recommended for now. This is not your final character, it’s a rough guide.

Once you have done this a couple of times, you may not find it necessary to always start by drawing up these guides. But always keep it in mind.

Now that we have a number of heads down the side of the page (head heights) we should block out a body using basic shapes.

The basic shapes used here are Ovals, Squares, Rectangles and Wedges. This will be our basic but very important guide when beginning. Remember these steps so that you can do this in your head without having to sketch them down every time. Keep drawing and when you run into trouble, break things down into the most basic shapes.

 

So now that there is that basic understanding of character proportion and shapes we want to begin by drawing a Manga head.

Step 1.

Draw a circle and divided it into 4 equal parts by drawing a vertical and horizontal line through the centre of the circle. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but close enough is good enough. Remember all these steps are rough to act as a guide and should be drawn very lightly. Clean up comes later.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2.

Now we have divided the circle in to two equal sections we need to do the same for the bottom half. Once you have divided the radius in half add it to the base of the circle and mark it off, this will be where your chin is.

 

 

 

 

Step 3.

It’s time to put in those nice lines to indicate a face, from the edges of the circle draw a curved line that connects to the centre of the base chin line.

(Try not to make the chin 2 pointy)
Remember you don’t have to go into so much detail to get this basic shape. It’s is fine to skip this step if you’re confident enough with the head shapes you’re creating. However it is nice to have this basic understanding of head shapes. This is the key to having a nice shaped Manga face with a body that matches.

Drawing a manga head shape from front on is relatively easy, so this time let’s start drawing the heads from all different angles. Remember to apply the same rules to each different type head.
The next following images are step by step breakdowns on drawing heads from different angle. Note that the same rules have been used throughout.

A helpful tip is to think of the circle as a 3D shape (sphere) from now on. You’re creating the illusion of depth.

 

Draw a curve line that is left to the centre of the middle. Where a point is made will be your new centre point. From the centre line draw a vertical line down then divide it the same way as the previous step. Draw two of the curve lines to connect the jaw and sides of the circle. This is the ¾ view so the lines which connect are going to be a little bit different. Use this image as a guide, do not trace it. Try and draw your own by applying the same rules.

 

 

 

 

 

From here things get slightly harder especially drawing from lower and higher angles. The same rules apply but are harder to draw because they are in perspective i.e. there will be some foreshortening. Draw a circle but instead of drawing the lines through the centre of the circle we are going to use arcs. Make these arcs cross over as follows:

With the new point these arcs draw a line from this point in the direction you want your characters chin. Using the previous you should be able to determine where the chin sits.

The thing to remember here when drawing a head from this angle (looking up) is that you will be able to see underneath the jaw. This might be a little difficult to do but keep practising. There is more than one way to approach drawing this a head from this angle so keep experimenting.

 

 

 

 

The area shaded is blue is area the underneath of the jaw before it becomes your neck. Drawing this in and keeping it in mind will make the character more 3D and less flat. When drawing it’s important to think of things in 3D space as it will create a character that is more in depth and thus more pleasing to the eye.

Before drawing all the facial features that will be covered in next week, it would be beneficial to you to practice and draw lots of different head shapes.  Draw from multiple angles and draw plenty of them, we can always go back to add the face and hair. Keep on drawing these and build up a library of them so you can always go back to detail the shapes. Practising drawing this head shape with those block like body shapes discussed earlier and you will be on your way to creating a full fledge manga character.

 

 

Till next week keep practising!