How to Draw Anime Pictures

Drawing anime art requires practice.

Japanese animation is a popular, stylized and distinctive style of drawing. People want to know how to draw in this style both for fun and to expand their artistic skill set. Anime isn't a single way of drawing characters. There are features that are common to anime, but many different artists and styles. There are many resources that instruct how to draw Anime, but it is best to begin by practicing the basics.

Things You'll Need

• Screenshots from your favorite Anime
• Other pictures that focus on the face and basic body positions to use as a guide

Instructions

1. Pick a style. Which style do you like the best, or think you'll have the easiest time learning? Choose that one. Pay particular attention to the facial features of the style you have chosen. While body dimensions are important in the anime style, it is the eyes, nose and mouth that are distinctive and key to drawing anime.

2. Start practicing eyes, as they are the main focus of the face and often the hardest part to master. Anime eyes are large, with dark solid pupils and reflections of light in them. Reflections of light are oval or circular, white spots that break up the solid, circular pupil of the eye. How many, how large and what shape depends both on personal preference and the style of anime. Continue to draw the eyes over and over. Make sure you draw both eyes, because drawing two eyes that match is a lot harder than beginners realize. Look at the "Resource" section for an image of several different kinds of anime eyes.

3. Draw the nose and mouth. In anime art, both of these features are fairly minimal and consist of a couple lines. The nose is often a curved line paired with a smaller curved line for the nostril; mouths generally do not have a defined upper lip.

4. After practicing each feature on its own draw the eyes, mouth and nose together so you learn how they fit with each other.

5. Move on to head and body shape. Begin drawing with a straight-on view, rather than complicated poses or angles. Anime heads are angular, generally with pointed jaws and sharp jawlines. Bodies tend to have long legs and exaggerated features like breasts, collar bones, belly buttons and abs. Practice drawing the parts of the body repeatedly until you are comfortable with the process.

6. Combine all the features you have been practicing separately to draw a full character. You'll need to do this more than once, because the first time you try you'll make a number of proportion mistakes. Just continue to work on it until you get a feel for how different body features relate to one another.

7. After you have practiced the basic features and body poses, find a website or a book that features the style you picked. Use the detailed pictures and tutorials for different body poses to enhance your drawings. Books and websites can also help you draw hair, clothes, weapons and environments. Looking at stills from an anime show or finding frames you like in a manga can also be helpful. Refer to the "Resources" section below for further information.

8. Gradually begin to create your own original drawings. You can start off by using another picture as a rough body proportion guide, but change the hair, face and clothing to be your own work. Eventually you should be able to sketch out a rough picture without looking at anything.

9. Compare your drawings to the different guides that you used to measure your progress, and to other pieces of anime art. Keep practicing until you are pleased with the results.

Tips & Warnings

• While copying other drawings is fine for practice in the beginning, make sure you eventually try to draw without looking at a guide.

• Artistic skill is always evolving and getting better as you practice and learn new things, so don't quit if your drawings aren't quite the way you imagine them to be.

References

• Anime Cubed: How to Draw Anime