How to Draw Anime Arms
Anime is a particular style of cartoon drawing that originated in Asia. The characters are easily recognized owing to their distinctive quirky, jagged hair and angular facial expressions. Arms on the anime characters are drawn in a minimal way, with simple lines used to illustrate the shape and dimensions. Practice drawing different body parts, especially arms, to perfect your anime illustration skills.
Instructions
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Draw a vertical line on your paper. This is the length of the arm, so if you are attaching the arm to the anime character make sure its length stretches from the top of the shoulder to the groin. This gives the arm the correct proportions to the character's body.
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Draw two long oval-like shapes, similar to sausages, along the line. First, draw a thin sausage on the lower half of the line, making sure it tapers slightly downwards. The tapering is to represent the slimmer portion of the wrist. Draw a second sausage overlapping the top end of the first. This needs to be wider than the lower part of the arm, because of the character's muscle mass.
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Trace around the outline of the two sausages to make the arm coherent. Pay particular attention to the area around the elbow. At this point, there should be two slight indentations along either side. If you follow the joint of the sausages, you will begin to see the indentations.
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Add a small "V" shape in the middle of your figures between the elbow indentations. This represents the elbow joint. Anime characters are very stylized, but few lines are used to build up the body shape.
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Shade around the top of the shoulder, and underneath the bicep. Gradually fade the shading around to the front of the arm to achieve a rounded appearance. Then, shade a dark area along the inside of the lower portion of the arm.
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Sketch the hand on the anime figure. The hand lacks detail, but the shape needs to be accurate, and the fingers clearly illustrated. First, draw a "U" shape with one side of the letter's shape depicted longer than the other. This forms the thumb and index finger. Then, duplicate this shape around the first, but make it slightly bigger. This is the basic shape of the hand.
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Follow the "U" shaping guidelines to create the shape of the hand. Then, you can add light pencil marks to simply distinguish where each finger is separated.
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Review your image. Assess the proportions and depth of field of the arm. If you are drawing a male arm, then add a few lines parallel to the underside of the upper arm. These represent muscle. However, make female arms more slender. Both sexes have similarly shaped arms but are simply different in size.
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Go over the lines with a fine black pen. Then, erase the pencil lines with an eraser.
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References
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/BananaStock/Getty Images
