Anime Drawing for Beginners

We will first start with the eye of a female.

Now we will draw the male eye. Similar steps to the female eye with very little difference.

Finally, we will draw closed eyes both upwards and downwards.

• The closed upwards eye is used to indicate smiling.
• The closed downwards eye is used for a sleeping character or one deeply in thought.

 We will learn how to draw the very simple nose, in addition to the smiling and laughing mouth.

Now we will learn how to draw the face. We will start by drawing the symmetric front view for a girl.

And here is the front view for a guy.

We will go back to the earlier-drawn girl face and add hair to it.

Similarly, we will draw the guy's hair.

Here we will learn how to draw the face from a different angle, the three-quarter or 3/4 view.

We will draw both the girl and guy in this view.

The last thing to learn in this section is the side view. It might look hard and intimidating at first, yet it's much simpler to draw than it seems!

Before learning how to draw the hands, it is important to pay attention to several points concerning the anatomy of the hand. By keeping these in your mind, drawing hands will become easier to understand.

Now we will learn how to draw the hand by applying the points we have discussed in the previous lecture.

In this lecture we will draw a variety of hand poses.

Drawing feet is much simpler than hands. We are going to learn here how to draw the most useful and frequent feet poses.

We are going to learn how to draw the female body by making use of simple shapes. In the following lecture we will cover four different views: Front view, 3/4 view, side view, and lastly, back view.

We will draw the male body in a similar approach. The following lecture also explains the four different views: Front view, 3/4, side, and back view.

Since the characters we will draw will definitely not be standing stiffly, we need to practice drawing poses. The pose of the character plays an important role in conveying the personality and mood.

We have so far learned drawing the bodies by using simple shapes. Understanding poses will be simpler as we will use the same shapes but with varying their sizes and angles.

We will draw 4 different poses in this lecture.

DesignDoll is one of the best tools that help the artist in getting a precise reference for the pose in their mind. With this software you can make any pose you want by controlling the doll (or multiple dolls) and changing its posture.

This lecture offers a general explanation about using the DesignDoll software and its useful features. After that, a pose will be created then used as a reference for drawing.

DesignDoll is compatible with Windows operating system. I am not sure whether it's compatible with iOS since the website does not mention anything regarding that.

Download DesignDoll: http://terawell.net/terawell/?page_id=56

Doll-Atelier: http://doll-a.net/terawell/

Clothing and fashion come in many variations, especially for girls. Girls wear different kinds of tops and bottoms as well as dresses, and much more. We will go over some of common fashion items here.

Let's start with tops!

Next is some bottoms; skirts and pants!

Finally, dresses! Many girls like wearing dresses, don't they?

We're going to draw four different looks for the guy as well!

Let's start with tops again.

And now, bottoms.

And to conclude this section, we will learn how to draw shoes; flat and high-heels!

Learning how to draw facial expressions is of great importance as they are what helps convey the characters emotions, especially when it comes to drawing comics and manga.

In this lecture, we will draw facial expressions that convey some of the common basic emotions.

Hairstyle is of the most important factors of a character design. You may have noticed that most anime (or manga) characters maintain the same hairstyle throughout the series, or do very slight changes such that you can still tell that the character is the same.

This, in addition to the colors of the hair and eye as well as the design of the outfit are what contribute to the character design, and make the character unique in its own way.

Females have plenty of variations when it comes to hairstyles, much more than males, since a female can have a short, medium, or long hair (Well, a male can have that too, but it's not as common). As well as the different ways the hair can be styled.

This lecture introduces four different hairstyles for girls.

You can play around with a male's hairstyle as well, but with less freedom than that of a female, since most males have a short hair.

We are going to draw some different hairstyles for the guy. But don't forget that you can come up with much more variations if you want!

Chibis or little characters are a lovely version that makes the characters look cuter, since we draw them in an extremely unrealistic small size that resembles that of a toddler. But in the end, when it comes to anime (and manga), everything is possible, so why not?

Drawing chibis is actually a form of art itself. It is a broad world, and some artists choose to be specifically just chibi artists. That's why we will talk about it here in a simple and brief way.

We will draw a chibi with a basic pose and another random one.

As I have previously mentioned, we as artists are always in need to observe the world around us, or any thing that helps us draw better and more realistically. Which is why using references when drawing is not a bad thing at all, but rather, it is extremely important so that we get inspiration and improve our skills.

I will mention here some of the references that I use frequently, they help a lot!

Here are the references I mentioned in the video, as well as the keywords I used in searching.

1. Google Images:

Keywords: poses, hands

2. DesignDoll Software

3. Pinterest Website:

Keywords: anime body tutorial, anime hair tutorial, anime eyes tutorial, anime chibi tutorial

4. YouTube Channels:

• My Channel: Pluvias: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz6JQHAU1um2_w31udtQ7Sw

• Ayasal: https://www.youtube.com/user/PokeTheCookie

• Blanca J. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwUaWpOm0hAbSOScVCdT8RQ
  

• Blizz-Mii Art: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEeeVHfbME3SjrwNsmQcFbQ/videos

• Dee Juusan: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC31Gwj9p4dIVVi-pcNjZq-g
  

• Hyanna Natsu: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6vr5gV11oSIstj9mer5AiA
  

• Longestdistance: https://www.youtube.com/user/PropheticAnomaly

• Lulu Chwan: https://www.youtube.com/user/animineloverable
  

• markcrilley: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCno-YPZ8BiLrN0Wbl8qICFA

• Naschi: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6NQ5ob8mRCav9KYyA9gf8w

• Neko Rina: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwYhFAz5aSEoat4B_SJzoQg

• Rambutan Illustration: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0eVhLHMHgUoa5BXN0RbQVw

• Sasucchi95: https://www.youtube.com/user/MsSasuXsaku
  

• Yamio: https://www.youtube.com/user/YamioSama
  

• Yenkoes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVVt5tbZEzfQSIsHUh3b_vg

• Yoai Hime: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcOi2fkewiPJ9rcEGJCSUuw

Lastly, don't forget that practice is what will mainly help you improve your skills!

Don't lose hope or give up at all. Since you love drawing and are passionate about it, you will definitely reach your goal with continuous practice.

Believe in yourself, believe that you can improve!

I hope you found this course useful, and I whole-heartedly wish you all the best on your art journey!