How to Draw Manga Female Hair

Big hair and eyes are a female manga character's trademarks.

The popular Japanese animation style known as Manga (literally "comic book") is a very striking visual style of art that continues to influence many cartoons and comic books in western culture. Manga possesses a few inherent characteristics that make the art style easily identifiable, such as doe-eyed female characters. Another trait is sweeping or dramatically spiked hairstyles, for both male and female characters. Despite manga's larger than life presentation, creating manga hairstyles still means paying attention to basic geometric shapes.

Instructions

1. Complete the face or head of your manga character. Alternately, simply sketch the basics for the head and save the details for later once you have the hairstyle completed. Keep in mind the masculine and feminine qualities of the manga head shape: males typically have boxier heads but pointed chins while females have thinner heads, smaller chins and higher cheekbones.

2. Decide which hairstyle suits your character specifically: generally speaking, the heroine has softer lines that make up sweeping, innocent hair while heroes have broad, angular lines that make up the spiky hair style. The choice is up to you, though. For sweeping style, draw a half-circle dome over the top of the head; for spiky, draw a square or upside down trapezoid.

3. Draw two to four upside down elongated triangles in the square or trapezoidal shape on the head, then erase the outline of the square/trapezoid, revealing the "spikes" underneath. You want to make the spiky hair appear as one solid piece versus hair strands so draw sharp points on the ends of the upside down triangles.

4. Draw the outline of the bangs underneath the dome to create a sweeping style. Add elongated triangles to the sides of the hair, but make the triangles less rigid in shape, curving and contouring the lines as you see fit. There's very little detail in manga hair: add a few soft, sweeping lines to the interior of the dome/hair sides. Erase any overlapping lines you may have made, then trace your hairstyle in black ink to make your art stand out on the page.

5. Consider the style of the popular anime heroine Sailor Moon; the character forgoes both styles typical of manga in favor of a hairstyle unique to her design. Sailor Moon features a somewhat feathered hairstyle with bangs that dip slightly past the brow. Draw an oval versus a dome to create her style (don't forget to draw a vertical line to make the part), then add in her considerable "odango" hair ties (literally, "dumplings") at the top of her head which attach to her long and flowing pigtails. Use your imagination to combine this type with element with the others to make your character your own.

References

• "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Drawing Manga;" John Layman & David Hutchison; 2008
• Eternal Sailor Moon: Pictures and Resources