How to Draw Manga Faces and Hair

All you need to take this course is a pencil and a piece of paper, and perhaps a ruler. However, you can also draw digitally, with a tablet, such at the Wacom Cintiq.

In this video, I show why I prefer to draw with a tablet, and why drawing with a tablet is pretty much the same as drawing with a pencil.

Before drawing a manga face or anime face, we need to understand the fundamentals of how to draw a regular face. Learn this first, then drawing manga or anime will be that much easier.

The easiest view of the manga face to learn, IMO, is the front view, so we will start there. Also, after you know how to draw the front view of the manga face and head, it is much easier to apply those measurements to the side view and the 3/4s view.

The next hardest view to learn, and not too often used in manga, is the side view. However, it is necessary to learn, not only for when you want to use it in a comic, but also to better understand the angled views.

Now, among the basic views, the 3/4s was the hardest for me to learn, and that is what we learn in this video. Just take your time. Do the exercises. Draw it several times, using the measurements, then draw it several times from memory.

An overview of what we learned so far in the course.

The eyes are the most important feature to learn because they make manga look like manga. The eyes are the more expressive part of the face. I think that's why the Japanese stress the eyes in manga.

In manga, noses are simplified, but they still need to be learned. There are many styles of noses of which I teach the most popular ones.

Manga mouths are also highly simplified and reduced in size, but still, we must learn the basic shapes that make of the mouth. Only then, can you truly understand how and why the manga mouth is simplified.

We also learn how to draw the most popular types of manga mouths.

We learn a quick overview of the other angles of the manga head, and how it works.

First we learn how hair works and a really cool method for drawing hair. Then we apply this to manga hair. We also learn how to draw a few popular styles of manga hair.

And finally, we learn how to draw manga emotions, which is a mix of how we change the eyes, eyebrows, and mouth. We learn to draw the most popular emotions used in manga, and how to mix and match different emotional eyes and mouths to get new emotions.

This video overviews everything we learned in the how to draw manga or anime faces course.

Some asked me what my settings are for Manga Studio 5, so here they are. I also talk about why I now prefer Manga Studio 5 over Photoshop.