I wanted to go straight into proportion and figure drawing, but we’ll start with the fundamentals.

Also, this is my first tutorial (of sorts), so please comment if you have any suggestions for improvement or need clarification.

Stationery

Really, all you need at this point in time is a pencil and an eraser. But for those interested, these are what I usually use for monochrome sketching:

The only thing that might seem out of place would be the blue pencil lead, right? Heres what you can use it for.

(Note: You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them)

This is a shot of the rough sketch, done in blue pencil. Edits (i.e. extra messy lines all over the place ;|) were done liberally.

And here’s the punchline:

In short, you doodle/scribble/draw the same line over and over again with blue pencil, then go over the lines you want with black. This has two benefits, firstly, you can sketch freely with less worry about lines running somewhere it shouldn’t, and having to abuse the eraser, and secondly you can remove the blue in photoshop to obtain a cleaner sketch (so you will have an easier time re-lining/coloring/etc).

The blue pencil lead I use, if you noticed, is 0.5. These are generally more expensive and the only reason why I got them was because i didnt like the lines of a 0.7 pencil (FYI, 0.7 blue leads are relatively cheaper and more widely available. Locally, that is.)

I have noticed that, in some publications for manga basics, they go into rather deep detail about pen nibs. In my experience pen nibs are messy and are a real hassle to use, and I used to have some ugly ink blotches on my desk because ink tends to drip from the nib T_T

If you want to use a pen to line, I suggest using technical pens (Sakura’s Micron line is good).

Moving on…

The Cross

Many beginner manga tutorials teach this. To understand what the cross does, envision two wires, perpendicular to each other.

Now imagine you have a human skull, and you wrap the first wire horizontally over the circumference of the skull. Do the same for the second wire, albeit vertically.

That is exactly what the cross does; To give you a more three-dimensional idea of what the face should be like. This helps in shading and the adding of features to the face, and also facial angling.

Next, the three-quarter view. This angle is a simple way to enhance your two-dimensional character’s three dimensional aspect (lulz)

You might notice, that this cross-wire system helps you determine where the nose/mouth are positioned, and also support the cheeks. The wires are curved, mapping the face and thus showing you the approximate contour of the face.

This may take a bit of practice to see/replicate.

Finally, we will move on to the head angle I used to have the most trouble with; the side view.

In order to make drawing a good side view easier, envision the side of a skull. It isn’t rounded like the front view, rather it is longish, and can be simply described as a wedge shape.

The vertical line is now on the front, and only the horizontal line can be seen.

For your character to have a more exaggerated facial contour a la recent anime, you could increase the curve on the front of the face slightly inwards.

And here is a little appendix to the above, which is the back view and the way I draw ears.

My ears follow a smoothened out half-8 curve, and are kept simple. There are more elaborate ways to draw ears; you could try referencing shonen manga.

As for the back view, try to let the hair follow the contours of the vertical curve and the neck.

Note: Aside from the three above angles, you can practice manipulating the crosses to achieve many other angles. Do try that, and practice drawing angled faces.

Eyes

I am assuming here that you do know how to draw a basic eye, and will refrain from explaining how to draw a manga-style eye as I don’t want to force my eye-drawing style on everyone else.

Everyone who has drawn a facial profile would have possibly experienced this problem: The eyes are not aligned, or are of different sizes. Here is a quick solution to that:

First, following the contours, you draw two guidelines above the nose in accordance to the approximate size you want the eyes to be. Next, you draw another four vertical guidelines to ‘encase’ the area you want the eyes to be. Try not to space the eyes too close to the nose or the ends of the cheeks, have reference nearby if you are unsure of how to space them.

And there, you are done.

Hair

Firstly, a note about lines. Try not to use many small lines to make up a long line, or overlay too many lines to form a general curve (Theres the blue pencil for that). Especially in the case for hair, use quick, wrist flicking actions to create a smooth curve for drawing hair.

There are two ways to draw these curves, either using an upwards movement or a downwards movement. People usually use the downwards flicking action as it produces stronger and more fluid lines.

Next, adding volume to hair. I seperate hair into two parts, the fringe and the rest (;P). If you have seen a PVC figure before, think frontal hair piece and the other piece stuck against it, the one that creates a headseam.

Next, just keep adding curved wisps of hair (think two curved lines reaching a point at the end) for volume. You may have to have a three dimensional visualization of the hairstyle you have in mind to draw hair in perspective (e.g. 3/4 view).

Although drawn with lines, and in sections, try not to imagine the hair as being stiff wedges. When the hair comes into contact with a surface, it will bunch up or pool around the flat surface. You may have to experiment and practice to pull off this effect nicely, it does require a bit of technique.

Similarly, if you note wind direction, the wind should tousle up your character’s hair.

And with that, we have come to the end of the first fundamental tutorial. Again, if you have any constructive criticism, suggestions, clarification needed, or praise, do comment so that we can improve.