Improve Anime by Perfecting Your Manga Drawing Skills

By Rick Feathers

Perfecting your manga drawing skill requires practice but the key to good practice is what to practice for the most benefit. A lot of our drawings are usually something that is redrawn from an existing anime drawing and the more we draw the better we get. So that is one way to improve.

I want to show you another way to practice that will help you be more creative and most of all this techniques will be a guide to creating your on manga characters and their looks.

Start sketching and develop your own reference guide of various drawings. Here is what I mean, begin by just drawing certain facial features like eyes for example. Look for eyes showing expressions and the different variation you come across from a number of manga characters. Focus on what the eye also consist of like the pupil, iris and the shape which are mostly ovals and distorted circles.

Afterwards move to other body parts like the hand. Start by drawing a finger in a variety of positions and take notice of lines and how it bends. Then draw the hand in a number of ways like holding a stick to simulate holding a sword, two hands shaking, grabbing a shirt or arm and any other thing you can think of. To assist with this exercise take digital photographs of different body parts to draw.

You also want to draw clothes but focus on the little things like collars around the neckline, sleeves and cuffs around the arm and wrist, the way clothes gathers and folds.

I know that this is a lot of practice drawing but the end goal is to improve your drawings. This practice exercise is very beneficial because it creates a portfolio in your mind of various sketches that will aide in the creativity and understanding of character development for your own ideas. So start building a reference guide on paper and your mind. The rewards of your efforts will greatly enhance your very own personal style of manga.