How to sketch Manga

 

 

So, you have this amazing Manga idea. You want to draw a girl sitting with her legs crossed on top of a piano!!! Better yet, you imagine your own romantic manga and you want to draw that moment where the girl and the boy meets for the first time...
Whatever idea you have, you want to  make it come true. It can't be hard, right? Many people do it. There are tons of beautifully drawn manga, so it's totally doable, right?

Well, yes! It is doable. It is easy and fun. You can totally draw that manga you have in your head, and color it and even try to use it for your manga cover!

So how do you do it?

 

It goes without saying. You have to start sketching. Lose the fear of failing. Your sketch will be messy. Ugly. But it's the final drawing that counts. The one that is inked, ready to be colored.

 

 

Grab a piece of paper (or your Wacom tablet if you want to sketch digitally) and start with the body. I always like to start with drawing the character first because then I know how far or how close the perspective is. If, for example, you are drawing a girl sitting on a piano, then you might as well get the piano drawn first. Use a very light pressure when drawing, because you will be erasing a lot.
If you are drawing digitally with a very simple sketching software, like "Paint" then use very thin lines for the sketch and a much thicker lines for the final drawing.
If you have Manga Studio or any other software with layers, then sketch away with confidence and use a new layer when you are ready to ink.

I wanted to draw an action moment where my manga character is falling from a roof. It's an action scene, so as she is falling , she is actually aiming a gun at her attacker in self-defense.

 

 

 The sketch above is very basic. But it's a start. You have to start somewhere in order for you to come closer to making your dream of drawing manga true (/^▽^)/

 

 Right away, I was in love with the way her legs look. But her upper body needed editing. I redraw the upper body to make it look slightly more vertical.

 

 

Once I was done redrawing the upper body, I started drawing the hair, the arms, and the hands. Again, things are very rough. You want to get your initial idea down before it sleeps away ^o^

 

Hint: when you are drawing a manga girl, remember that the body of a girl has a lot of curves.

Have fun with it. Don't stress. Sketch, redraw, erase, and draw again. Get her body and features "right". You will just know it when you have the legs and the arms ready.
Besides, there is not really a set way to draw anything.

If you pay a close attention to the mangas you read, you will realize that how one artist draws the hands is totally different from another one does. Once, I saw a published manga cover. Everything was pretty except the fingers of the girl. They were so incredibly long and the proportions didn't seem "right" to me. But, it was published and it seemed that not too many people minded it ^o^.

 

 

Now, the order in which you do things is entirely up to you. I prefer to leave the hands and the feet to last. But I love Fashion! So I right away started to sketch her clothing. I based this drawing base on what I think looks sexy in a girl. And high socks with shorts look very cute!

 

At this point, I can ink and paint it.
But the main thing, was to get the drawing down. I had an idea and I didn't want it to slip away.

And that's exactly what you should do. Don't be afraid of being messy. The messier you are, the more risks you are taking and the more satisfied you will be at the end.

 

If you get to sketch your own and want to post it here or at my website, go to "my contact" page and email me.

 

Again, Happy Drawing!!! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°