from mr_shanab

In my previous post, Pencil sketching examples 2: how to draw manga tutorials, I shared about how you can use photo references to help you draw and improve on our artwork.

And one of the major assignments from my manga teacher was to look for photo references to aid me in my drawing.

While searching, I chanced upon some really good photo references resources that I am going to share with you about!

What is the advantage of having a good photo reference for drawing?

Before I begin sharing about comic photo reference resources, it will be good to share with you the benefits of references as good guides for drawing.

A good photo reference is important because you do not want to draw poses that are impossible for real humans to perform; unless you are making your characters as Luffy D. Monkey in One Piece.

Realism is very essential in manga comics, and if you put characters that are in poses which are impossible to perform, it is going to make your artwork look very bad.

Also, you want to draw people with good anatomy proportions.

A photo reference is a great guide for comparison, to allow to see whether your drawings are anatomically correct.

Lastly, you want to experiment with different perspectives in your artwork.

Manga is all about drawing in perspective, and how you want to relate your drawings to the reader in order to make your story telling fruitful.

/*Picture on the right from buddy_scalera, click to enlarge

Just like the photo on the right, you don’t want to always draw your characters in an upright position.

Experimenting with different perspective, like drawing your character as though you are looking up to her, has tremendous effects on your storytelling.

Therefore comic photo references are precious resources that every manga or comic artist should look into, especially if you are drawing people in your comics.

How to draw people: comic photo reference resources

Comic photo reference poses are really difficult to find online, simply because we don’t usually carry swords or guns and take pictures with them.

However, there is one comic artist by the name of Buddy Scalera, who apparently took photos of people with many poses and even with equipment!

/*Picture on the right from buddy_scalera, click to enlarge

Buddy Scalera made 3 albums of these photos, and is currently selling them as book on Amazon to aspiring comic artists who want good references in order to help in drawing.

I will just briefly share with you what does he have in store in these albums.

People and Poses

from buddy_scalera

In this book, he has many great photos that contain different poses and perspective for you to draw inspiration from.

/*Picture on the right from buddy_scalera, click to enlarge

Example on the right are poses and perspectives that you might want to try out in your drawings.

Especially photos that contains how the person holds a weapon, it is important to learn how to illustrate hands that are gripping a weapon.

Women and girls

from buddy_scalera

This book is dedicated to drawing women and girls, and he has even examples on actions, like women taking off clothes!

Don’t worry, the models are fully dressed from the beginning to the end.

from buddy_scalera

I particularly like the above pose and equipment for a girl.

In my opinion, it is great to have a girl who has a tough looking front for a comic.

Men and boys

from buddy_scalera

Last but not least, the men and boys have their own gallery as well!

from buddy_scalera

The above is a really cool photo and perspective to draw from.

It really show clearly the cool look of the person from these perspective. Maybe I should try drawing this out someday.

Final words for this post

There are many other sample pictures that I have, but I will try to load it up as a slideshow or something for you to browse on.

Meanwhile, you may just try to use these samples, and if you really like the photos, do consider purchasing the books for your own research.

That’s it for this post! Stay tuned for more updates on manga journey!

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from docpi

In this post, I am going to share about some of the resources that I used to help me improve in my manga drawing skills.

Most of my manga drawing skills do not come from these online resources, because I have a manga teacher which teaches me individually on how to draw.

And I will still suggest for you to get a manga teacher who can teach and help you draw well. It is important as online manga resources cannot help you keep track about your level of competence and improvement in your drawing skills.

However online manga resources are still important for exposure and information, and for this reason I would like to share with you some of these resources that I use.

How to draw manga tutorials resource: MangaTutorials.com

This is a screenshot by me, on the homepage of http://mangatutorials.com/.

Basically, if you have been searching for manga tutorials on Google, you will undoubtedly find this page.

It has one of the most complete manga tutorials that I have found; from the basics of becoming a manga artist, all the way to publishing your first manga comics; it truly is a near complete guide.

They also have a forum for this website as well!

What I love about MangaTutorials.com

Looks are deceiving, as MangaTutorials.com really covers a whole lot of subjects that you wouldn’t know about.

There is even a list on publishers you might want to engage if you want to print your first comic book! And really, there is too much to talk about it here.

The most fascinating subject for me is the tutorial on how to use the Manga Studio software.

If you do not know what is Manga Studio, it is a simple software which allows you to create comics easily. It has in-built panels, helps you in creating your storyline, and much more!

And as I am looking to produce black and white webcomics, Manga Studio is a great tool!

I haven’t found a great tutorial on Manga Studio online, and I am glad that there is a step-by-step series on how to use Manga Studio.

What I do not like about MangaTutorials.com

Although it covers many subjects, it does not have video tutorials for demostrations and you are left to learn by reading the words while looking at the pictures for examples.

Besides, I personally find that they are not detailed enough in their manga tutorials. After having personal coaching from a manga teacher, I felt that there are still many details in drawing that have yet to be covered.

So basically, it is really difficult for someone to learn from these manga tutorials, and if you do not like to read, probably MangaTutorials.com isn’t for you.

However, it isn’t easy to come up with manga tutorials anyway, and drawing isn’t an easy subject to teach, so I doubt that there are many better websites than MangaTutorials.com which could teach well.

Also, the information they have there is so overwhelming, your head will feel heavy after reading all those information.

How to benefit from MangaTutorials.com

1. Join their forum, post up your artwork and let them critique your abilities.

The community in their forum is good, so in most cases you won’t be left feeling condemned after others critiqued your work.

2. Read their manga tutorials slowly, otherwise you will choke from all the information.

3. If you need information other than drawing tutorials, like how to apply toning, or if you want to look for publishers and other information, this is a very good place to search from.

4. They have activities like drawing competitions and all sorts, so it helps you practice your drawing skills while you can have fun!

Well, the above is not exhaustive, but I guess I made my point that MangaTutorials.com is a website worth checking out.

Final words for this post

If you have any other comic, manga or other webcomic resources that you want to share, let me know in the comments box, and I will do up a post or review on it.

I hope this will help you in your journey to become a manga, a comic or a webcomic artist.

Stay tuned for more updates on Manga Journey!

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from slyths

As promised, I will be showing some of my foul ups and mistakes of my manga drawing training with my manga teacher.

You can laugh all you want, but this is for learning purposes, so I guess it is worth it for readers online.

Anyway, if any reader wants to begin learning how to draw people for manga comics or webcomics, please start with the “Drawing outline of human body” series, because in the series we discuss about the fundamentals of drawing manga males and females, or rather manga girls and guys.

However in this post we will touch on how to make drawings of human body look more life-like, like people.

Learn how to draw people: Mistakes to learn from

*Click on the picture to enlarge.

This is one of the major mistakes I made in drawing outlines of male anatomy. As this was focusing on anatomy, I didn’t spend much time on making the characters look great on their facial features, so pardon the ugly facial features.

So what is the most prominent mistake I made in the above doodle art? It was in both male characters’ poses.

Look at the legs at the above two male manga characters; they are two closed apart! No guy at any street would walk or pose with their legs so close to each other like a female’s.

After I drew the whole character, I was totally disguested with it, especially the right male character. It looked so sissy. However it was a learning point and I decided to still keep this mistake on paper..

Mistake to learn from #1: Never draw male characters with their legs closed together, unless we are trying to draw a sissy.

Tip #1: To avoid the above mistake, my manga teacher advised me to observe how real people walk naturally. By making pointers of how they walk, the mannerisms and the poses, it will help in my drawing skills in drawing people.

If any reader read “Drawing outline of human body part 4: Adding muscles and flesh to stick figures“, you will understand that I did not draw the above male characters at one attempt.

Rather I did it in multiple stages: from drawing stick figures, to adding flesh and muscles to the stick figures, and lastly to add details to the outline of human body.

The above exercise helped to identify where did my mistake occur, which I am going to show it here:

*Click to enlarge

As we can see above, even before I added details to my male characters, the outline of the human body already suggested that my poses are really for females and not for males.

Therefore, it goes to show that my advanced stick figure drawings were not mastered well. If it was done well, the mistake would not be made.

Tip #2: Seek to master advanced stick drawings and their poses well. As I have mentioned before, my friend who graduated with an arts degree, stated that they spent 1 whole year drawing stick figures as foundation.

Therefore stick figure drawings are not just for children to play with; it is used for artists to practise drawing human anatomy.

Other tips and advices

The above tips are not just for walking and standing poses; even for sitting and kneeling poses, generally real guys do not really close up their legs, for natural reasons.

*Click to enlarge

The above pose isn’t really so bad, but my manga teacher commented that generally japanese guys do not kneel that way; rather their legs are still apart while kneeling.

Hence it is vital to notice the mannerisms and poses that real people make, in order to learn how to draw people. Otherwise our artwork will lack realism.

Final words for this post

The mistakes that I made in the above doodle art are not exhaustive; I only picked out the major flaws in these doodles.

If any reader wishes to learn how to draw people well, please go to the “How to draw manga tutorials” page and look out for the series on “Drawing outline of human body”. It will be good to start from there.

Anyway that’s it for this post. Stay tuned for more updates!

If anyone wants to share his experience of drawing manga, or comics, or webcomics, just share it in the comments section(highly recommended for everyone to see) or the “Contact me” form. Any participation is greatly appreciated!

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by tom tom – The gaze into the sun ( i love inu )

In this post we will be continuing about manga human anatomy, on drawing outline of human body part 4. This is a long series, because human anatomy for manga drawings is an art by itself, and it is really difficult.

I realised that I continued the series for awhile and then cut it short with topic liks “how to start a webcomic”. My apologies, because I didn’t want to sound draggy concerning this series.

Anyway, if any reader wishes to know what has been going on, these are the previous posts concerning drawing outline of human body, about manga human anatomy: Part 1, Part 2a, Part 2b, and Part 3. It is a sequence by itself.

Drawing outline of human body part 4: Adding muscles and flesh to stick figures

We will take the previous doodle art drawings from my previous posts as examples.

Click on the above images to enlarge the pictures.

From left to right, you will notice a transition between them.

1. First, I draw a stick figure as a guide for my character’s pose.
2. Then, after tracing the stick figure onto another piece of paper, I draw the muscles and flesh on the new piece of paper, which outlines the body of my character’s pose.
3. Lastly, by tracing the body outline onto another piece of paper again, I add details to the hair, face, and overall clothes on the new piece of paper. I will have 3 different drawings in total.

This is the drill I have been doing for awhile. It helps to build anatomy into your intuitive senses.

I will put up the females’ anatomy as well.

To reiterate, draw the pose of your character by using stick figures.

Trace your stick figures on to another piece of paper, and add flesh & muscles to your new piece of paper.

Again, trace the body outline of your character, and add the final details to your new piece of paper. You will have 3 pieces of artwork at the end.

What are the things to note?

• Notice how I shape the limbs and the joints. The human body is shapely, full of curves and cannot be drawn by straight lines strictly.
• Notice the collar bone, and the throat. Draw them out in your manga character.
• Always note where your character is facing, because you will need to adjust the look of the whole body to the same direction. I have occasions where in the midst of my drawing, my top half of my character was not aligned with the bottom half.
• For male anatomy, please add chest muscles and the rib cage for your male character. It helps to define the body, making the art look more realistic.
• For female anatomy, it is their breasts instead of chest muscles and ribcage.
• Shape the hips and the legs of your characters according to the suggestions given in previous posts on “drawing outline of human body”.

Final Words for this post

The above exercises cannot be accomplished well without first learning how to master drawing advanced stick figures in “Drawing outline of human body part 3“.

This is because the stick figures will give foundation and backbone to your drawings. It is like building a house; without a good foundation, the house will crash.

Likewise, learn to draw advanced stick figures, for different gender, and in different poses. Once it looks right and you have a hang of it, proceed to add muscles and flesh.

In future posts I will show you why mastering advanced stick figures is necessary, by showing you some of the mistakes I made.

Anyway, that’s all for today’s posts, stay tuned for more updates!

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In this post I am going to share about advanced stick figures drawing, and it is moving closer to our actual drawing to manga comic characters.

Let us assume that many readers have gone through the previous drawing outline of human body sessions. If any reader needs to know what is happening, start from part 1, part 2a and part 2b.

The above picture of the manga Bleach looks cool.

Advanced stick figures drawing example

I will begin by sharing some advanced stick figure drawing, in contrast to our previous manga anatomy exercises.

By comparing with both pictures on the left and on the right, one might guess that I have used the left stickman as a guide to draw my right picture.

This is exactly the kind of exercises my manga teacher asked me to practice on, and though it was tedious, it brought in tremendous results.

I had to trace my stickman into another piece of paper, then draw muscles and flesh into the stickman drawing, trace the stickman with flesh and then finally produce a full profile character as shown on the right.

And we haven’t gone to the details of drawing hands and legs yet. That must be left for another day.

There is actually an intermediate step of drawing muscles and flesh to the stick figure before drawing details such as the image on the right, but I will leave that topic for another day too.

Drawing outline of human body: Advanced stick figures drawing

The spinal cord actually has a shape, as the character has a side profile view. The two triangles at the middle of the stick figure bends forward, giving the stick figure volume.

Most important of all, while drawing our stick figure guidelines we must take note of the balance of the body, and the centre of gravity of the entire character.

I wonder will I ever cover the topics on the balance of the body and the centre of gravity of manga characters, because these two topics are very technical and very difficult to describe in words. Will update if I ever get to the topic.

Anyway, besides observing how the overall stick figure look, notice that the stick figure has a pose. In this exercise, I was required to produce several stick figures with different poses, and then draw them into full profile manga comic characters.

Hence, in this advanced stick figures drawing, paying attention to the pose of the character is very important.

The pose of a character actually can dictate the femininity or the masculinity of a manga character. There were errors that I drew that made the male manga character look very sissy. I will show some errors that I made in future posts.

These are other examples of advanced stick figures and doodling that I had to do for practice, and the above are showing female poses.

How should one practice drawing to improve on manga anatomy?

Simple, just draw the stick figure in various poses that I have posted, according to the proportions that I have suggested in the previous “drawing outline of human body” series.

Notice that certain similar features are still in my stick figure drawings, such as drawing circles to represent joints, and drawing triangles to give a guideline of the shape of the upper body.

All these proportions are exactly what I had advocated and discussed before. Apply them to different poses shown in topic.

And in future poses I will discuss about adding flesh and muscles to stick figures drawing.

Final Words for this post

My friend, who graduated with an arts degree, told me that during art school they practised drawing stick figures for an entire year as foundation!

That is really tedious practices, however it built a strong foundation of the different proportions of human anatomy for the students.

So, if we want to develop well in manga drawing, there is no escape learning how to draw stick figures well.

Stay tuned for further updates! I will be posting more examples of different poses, silly mistakes that I made and how to add flesh & muscles to stick figure drawings in future posts to come.

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Today I am going to share how to add little details to manga eyes. This is in addition to what I shared before in How to draw manga easily: Eye drawing (part 2).

Once again, this topic will also be for beginners.

Manga eyes details: how to draw manga tutorials

Notice it starts from number 5; as it is a continuation of my previous posts, the beginning steps are found in How to draw manga easily: Eye drawing (part 2).

Let us run through some of the steps:

5. Add a little “U” in the middle of the iris to depict the pupil. There are variations to this step. We can actually draw a little oval in the middle of the iris and shade instead, however this is just for simplicity’s sake.

6. Shade half the eye as shown. Usually the top half of manga eyes are darker than the bottom half, because of shadow. We can add a little tone by lightly shading the bottom half.

7. Add eye lashes on the side of the eyes as shown, if you are drawing female characters. We can add eye lashes all across the eye lids, but this is just personal preference. In my opinion, adding eye lashes across the eye lids makes the face look too exaggerated and fake, so I will stick with just adding eye lashes at the side of the eyes.

This is an example of adding some details to manga eyes.

Sorry but I forgot the eye lashes.

Final Words for this post

I wasn’t thinking of preparing this topic at first, but I claimed a page at Mahalo.com on how to draw manga eyes. There are other things to cover as well, like manga eyes in different profiles etc, however I know how to draw them but I don’t know how to show them to the public yet.

So all these will be covered in future.

And its time to share a little about my personal life in regards to this manga journey. And this also will be shared soon.

Thanks for reading!

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We will continue from the previous anatomy session, and proceed on to do the general male anatomy for manga comic drawing.

As we are going through a series of drawing manga comic anatomy, it will be good to see my previous post on general anatomy for manga characters, and it will help you relate to today’s post.

To see my previous post about my stickman sketches, please click here.

Drawing outline of human body part 2b: General Male Anatomy

Today’s topic will also cater for beginners, therefore it will be as simple as possible for beginners. This is a another simple example of one of my practices I had with my manga teacher when I started out. I was again required to add flesh and a simple facial feature to my stickman drawing. Please compare the male stickman figure with the above body outline sketch. Again, notice the details from looking at the male outline sketch. There are some differences from the general female anatomy. These are some of the differences:

1. Instead of breasts, manga males have chest muscles and a prominent rib cage. (For an attractive manga male character only and not the plump ones.)
2. Male characters do not have a very wide hip and butt size unlike their female counterparts.
3. Male characters instead have broad shoulders, about 1.5 to 2 times the hips.
4. Male characters have bigger limbs and muscles than female characters.
5. Muscles are to be emphasized for a good looking male character, while female character’s prominence is their shapely body.
6. There is a little space right between the two legs and directly below the bottom-most triangle; it is marked with a circle. Keep the space there as we don’t want a manga merman instead of a manga guy.

Again, use the male body outline sketch as a guide to draw over your stickman. As this is catered for beginners, the picture above isn’t very advanced or sophisticated.

Other tips and advice

Again, this type of sketching isn’t going to work for manga comics; as it can be easily seen to be poor art and a lack of details.

However, it is needed for drilling practices, to familiarize our sense to accept the overall body structure of a manga male character intuitively, so that more advanced character doodles can be drawn.

Once one is familiar with the body structure, then he or she can move on to draw other forms of practices to improve on manga human anatomy. What I have shown had only been very general and basic manga human anatomy.

The above is a higher advanced level of anatomy training that I am now currently doing. Of course the hands are in blocks as my manga teacher wanted me to focus on the outline of the human body instead of the specific details.

I had drawn the doodle art above and my manga teacher made corrections on it.

It is not a perfect doodle, as I made many mistakes on it, however it looks much better than the above practice.

Final Words for this post

Without familiarizing with the body structure first, adopting a more sophisticated stickman drawing or drawing a more advanced outline of human body will make it extremely challenging.

That’s because if we do not correct the mistakes we make at the basic level, we will be prone to carry our mistakes into the later stage of our training.

Hence it is imperative to get the grasp of basics first before venturing forward.

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from aki-shou

Moving on from “Drawing outline of human body part 1: How to draw manga easily”, today we will discuss how to draw general female anatomy by adding flesh and muscle to the stickman.

I will post up male’s anatomy in another time, as human anatomy is a component of manga art that is most difficult to grasp.

Drawing outline of human body part 2a: General Female Anatomy

Today’s manga art sharing will cater even for beginners. I will try to make it as simple as possible.

This is a very simple example of one of my practices I had with my manga teacher when I started out. I was required to add flesh and a simple facial feature to my stickman drawing.

To see my previous post about my stickman sketches, please click here. By referring to the blog post., it will help to relate what I am going to share in this post.

Please compare the female stickman figure with the above body outline sketch.

Try to note every detail possible from looking at the female body outline sketch. Consider how the limbs are drawn and how the joints are emphasized. I will highlight more about limbs and other small details in future posts.

There are other details that we need to note in the above doodle sketch:

1. My scale isn’t accurate to a ruler, for I have used approximation to draw my scale. Why? That is because in drawing the proportion of a figure, you just need to use the height of the head as a rough gauge, and then map out the rest of parts of the body using the height of the head as the guide.
2. Do not be shy about drawing a manga girls chest or where you think it may be sensitive. We are drawing a person afterall, and if you are too shy, I recommend drawing animals as main characters to your manga comic instead.
3. If you notice, the thinnest part of the body for a slim manga girl is where the two triangles intersect. (Plump ones are excluded in this example.)
4. The centre of the chests of manga girls is at number 2 of the scale. The height of the chests is one head.
5. Do not combine the breasts! They are two separate entities. (I was initially rebuked by my manga teacher because of this.)
6. There is a little space right between the two legs and directly below the bottom-most triangle; it is marked with a circle. Keep the space there as we don’t want a manga mermaid instead of a manga girl.

Last but not least, just follow the given female body outline sketch to practise.

Other advices and tips

Understand that the above body outline of a female manga girl is still very primitive. It is not real looking enough to be used in manga comics yet.

So we are only practising with them; once we have attain a certain level of skill, we can proceed on with other kind of exercises.

However, at this point these are necessary practice exercises for everyone and especially beginners to familiarize. This is a list of what we need to be familiarize with:

1. The size and length of the different parts of the body in relation to each other.
2. The shape of the limbs, joints, and the overall shape of a good looking manga girl or lady.
3. The overall look and feel of a female manga body.

And soon, you will be able to draw more lively poses with good anatomy such as these:

And yes, the above is still more advance than what I have shared today.

I know it is still stick figure sketches, but please be patient; I took awhile to practise before drawing a full body scale with a good looking face.

So stick figure sketches for now.

Final words for this post

My manga teacher told me today that if a drawing doesn’t look very attractive, but has attractive proportions, attractive poses and portrays a very lively look, the manga comic will still captivate readers.

And she further said that if I am only good at drawing manga eyes, and not making characters look lively with good proportions and poses, I might as well just draw manga eyes for the rest of my life.

So what I am sharing today is really important.

Final note: It will be good if any reader that is wanting to learn, to try to draw the flesh and muscles for the male’s anatomy before I post it up. It will be interesting to compare and contrast our drawings.

Stay tuned for further updates!

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from icameinpeace

Drawing outline of human body part 1: how to draw manga easily

Human anatomy is a tough topic to talk about, because there are many things to discuss concerning the human’s anatomy. Yet today I hope to cater even for beginners to have an understanding of basic human anatomy.

Therefore, for simplicity’s sake and for everyone to learn together, I would have to take it slow in talking about human anatomy today.

The above picture is from Slam Dunk, Hanamichi Sakuragin.

Drawing stick figures as beginners’ guidelines

You might be thinking, “hey, I want to draw manga comic characters, not stick figures!”

Never laugh at drawing stick figures, because somehow it forms a basis for us to know human anatomy well.

My manga teacher gave me stick figures to draw for a few lessons. Why?

1. It is for the purpose of recognizing the locations of the joints that can rotate in the human body, and the locations of the parts of the body that can bend and move.
2. It is to know and be familiarized with the size and proportion of the major parts of the body so that we don’t draw an alien instead.
3. It is to train ourselves to be able to draw our characters in different sizes without messing up the proportions of the body.
   

We aren’t going to always draw our characters standing straight, and when we want our characters to take on a certain pose, we certainly must know where are the parts of the body that can move, rotate and/or bend.

General male’s anatomy

Many books will suggest that a manga male character will look the best with 7.5 heads. However, for the purpose of simplicity, 8 heads is still good proportion actually, and because 8 is a multiple of 2, and we can split the body by 2 always.

The above is one of my stickman practices where my manga teacher asked me to do.

There are many things to notice in the manga male’s anatomy. Using the left stickman as the reference, I shall summarize it in the following points:

1. From the top of the head to the hips is exactly 4 heads, and the hips to the legs is also exactly 4 heads tall. Use this as the proportion to draw the character.
2. The shoulder is about 1.5 to 2 times wider than the hips. That’s natural, for males have wider shoulders than females.
3. The two triangles above the hips give a guideline of how to draw the gradient of the body. At the cross section, it is where the waist is, and it is the narrowest part of the torso. (It gives a slight hour-glass figure of a slim male’s body.
4. The circles other than the head are joints that can bend or rotate. (It is not exhaustive, for I have not included 2 major parts yet, and it will be revealed when we come to the female’s anatomy.)
5. The triangle below the hip line is for the male’s private/sensitive part. (Please don’t be shy partitioning space for this, it is needed for effectiveness and realism.)
6. For the rest of the parts of the body, such as the length of the arm, or the length of the thigh, just use the scale given in the picture.

The above guidelines is for a slim looking male character. Plump ones will have to be done through personal experiments.

General female anatomy

It is slightly different from the male’s anatomy.

The circles that represent the joints and the proportion of the female manga’s anatomy are exactly the same interpretation as above, except that we need to know a few different features:

1. The widest part of the hip and the widest part of the shoulder is exactly the same length.
2. The cross-section of the two triangles above the hip is where the thinnest part of the torso should be, to give the ladies a good tight and slim hour glass figure. It is slightly higher than the male’s anatomy.

Also, the red circles at the extreme right stickgirl are areas that can bend, but isn’t exactly joints. Especially the waists, where ladies bend to give lots of different poses. It is the same with the male’s body.

What do we hope to achieve at the end?

After having a stickman, we can add its flesh and muscles to produce a good figure.

I admit that the above picture is at least a few steps beyond drawing the stickman and adding its muscles & flesh, but this is the incentive of going through a few basic drills of familiarizing ourselves with the outline of the human body using stickman.

Final points to note

Guidelines are important to give a skeleton of what to draw next, and it is a technique where every manga artist will use.

However the above guidelines can only suit to teach and train beginners, because it is too tedious and time consuming for professional manga artists to adopt. They have their own different and easier system for guidelines.

Also the guidelines shown in my stickman pictures are too straight; the human body is full of curves, hence it is only good to be familiar with for beginners, but we would have to go beyond that for us to draw more realistic characters.

Therefore just use the stickman pictures as guidelines for proportions, and draw some stickmen yourselves with a scale to effectively train your senses to know manga human anatomy.

Next time we can move from stiff stickmen and draw a different set of stickmen which is more realistic, and then it will lead on to adding flesh and muscles.

More will be revealed soon!

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Pencil sketching examples 2: how to draw manga tutorials

This will not be a step-by-step of “how to draw manga easily” tutorials, as I haven’t figured the dynamics of making it simple yet. However any reader may pick up some tips on drawing

Did anyone notice that the face of the doodle look surprisingly familiar? It was taken from my previous post here, where I was trying to let everyone see that the step-by-step method of drawing manga eyes worked well for me.

I had only completed the head of my doodle.

And then I was thinking to myself that the head looks good for me to continue on, so I completed a near full body (I wanted it to be a full body but somehow I drew on a corner of an A4 size paper, and I couldn’t continue the legs), and this is how it looked in the end.

So readers, if someone who isn’t talented to draw like me could draw a doodle, you can do it too. We just need to find out some of the basic systematic drawing of professional manga artists or comic artists, we could at least begin to doodle.

I will continue to explore on techniques to make it simple, so that everyone can learn.

How did I manage to draw such a doodle?

In the post about my first doodle art (where my manga teacher gave me her accessment of my doodle), my manga teacher was telling me that the usage of references is very important; every professional Japanese manga comic artist uses references to draw their characters.

And the source of these references can be anything you want to draw from: a picture, photo, magazines and so on etc.

Picture on the left from caught in a turtleneck

This is an example of a reference to draw from. I didn’t use this exact picture, but another picture of a lady shopping in a turtleneck with denim outfit.

So looking at the reference, while maintaining the pre-drawn head before, I used guidelines to sketch out the anatomy I want, then put in the details that is needed to produce the exact turtleneck with denims outfit.

The thing to look out for is details. The picture has many details, such as the crests and folds of the cloth, how the shadows of the crests and the folds give the picture volume.

Especially for a girls’ or ladies’ chest, how to allow the shadow and the fold of the cloth be drawn accurately, so that the chest doesn’t look flat, droppy or just out of shape.

First pencil sketching example try

My first pencil sketching example of the above doodle didn’t look so well because I didn’t draw the chest of my character properly. I overtly tried to display the chests of my character, which made it look unrealistic.

Picture on my right is my first try

After submitting for a critical review in a forum, many commented of the following things:

1. The chests just looks awkward. That’s because even in a tight-fitting turtleneck a girls’ chest would not be so defined on the cloth. Need to take out the shading in the middle and the defining lines, while replacing it with a better sketch.
2. The hands are abit too small.
3. Overall, it still looks good.

So it gave me abit of confidence, and I changed the chest, and now the doodle that sits on top of the page is the final product!

Anyway, I haven’t change the hands, because I am still exploring how to make the hands look better. And I will allow my manga teacher to give me a critique about this doodle very soon.

Final words for this post

There are a few key things to note.

1. Use a reference to draw. Drawing it out of pure imagination may not do the trick because our ideas and imagination tend to flunctuate and change while we are drawing. (Advice from my manga teacher)
2. Always take note of details; while drawing from your reference. Every detail you can spot will make the picture look better and realistic.
3. Be not afraid to make mistakes; its not embarrassing to want to learn.
4. Get opinions from others to improve your work.

That will sum up today’s post. Thanks for reading manga journey! There will be future posts ahead.

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