Tips for Progressing in Manga Drawing

03-03-2021 HowHow Team

What is the technique to draw the sets and the heroes of the manga? From Mecha to Magical Girl, there are very specific types of manga that require precise drawing skills.

Becoming a manga artist is no fun: it is not enough to take your pencils or your watercolor and improvise a storyboard. However, it is also not impossible if one sticks to certain basic rules in the narration as in the drawing of the manga.

For starters, an easy way to draw something that does not visualize well is to search the Internet or in print for the item in question. Be it the poses, the objects, the environments or the visual effects, you will inevitably find your happiness in the existing works and you will be able to adapt these elements.

However, you should not go so far as to copy an original work, whatever the type of manga: if you want to become a super Saiyan from Japanese sketches, then you will have to find your own style.

It is also important to remain open to criticism. Forget about 'my drawings are perfect, you do not know anything about it' because you will necessarily need an outside opinion to progress, even if it seems totally ignorant of the subject. At this point, family and friends can help, but they will often be overly lenient with you, so be careful.

As you draw, you will have access to some shortcuts to avoid having to represent things like hands and feet. Avoid these kinds of shortcuts at all costs: Better to draw hideous feet as you progress than to give up completely.

You will improve even more if you draw various types of characters regularly. It can be tempting to draw just one genre of manga characters, but varying is more educational. In the Evangelion manga, for example, the author sometimes draws children, adults, giant robots, and aliens.

Finally, the best advice we can give you is not to get discouraged too quickly. You do not become a manga sketch samurai by drawing every thirty seconds, you have to exhaust all the resources of your criteria to progress and regularly take examples to draw. The most important thing is to have fun and move forward smoothly. It is also possible to take a manga drawing class to pick up the pace.

Now that you have gotten familiar with the basic manga drawing tutorials, it is time to grab your pencil and drawing supplies in hopes of one day competing with Attack on Titan, Fairy Tail, or Dragon Ball Super.

On this page you will find more information on how to draw manga.