How to Draw Manga

Series Summary

Drawing and sketching refers to two-dimensional pieces of art made by marking on a surface with a variety of mediums. Drawing tools can include graphite pencils, pen and ink, colored pencils, charcoals and chalk and pastels. Drawing is the most foundational skill an artist possesses. The practice of drawing and sketching as an art form became widely popular in 15th century Europe when paper became generally available. The famous journal of Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci contains hundreds of sketches, brainstorms and observations that inspire draftsmen today. Almost every form of imaginable art involves some level of drawing or sketching. In this free video series on drawing, a professional illustrator demonstrates how to draw popular cartoon characters. Learn the difference between anime and manga by learning to draw examples of each, like Pokemon and Naruto characters. Draw video-game characters like Sonic the Hedgehog, and find out how to sketch recognizable animations like Disney's Tinker Bell. Also, get tips on basic human anatomy, like drawing the head, the neck and a human figure. Learning to draw begins with imitating the work of others.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Jay French at jayfrenchstudios.com, and I'm going to show you how to draw manga. Here, to show how to draw manga and the difference between that and anime, we're going to start with this illustration. It's already been begun. The biggest difference in manga is that because it's not animated, you can get more detailed. Now one of the most interesting things, especially in mangas, is that a lot of things can be highly detailed. Most especially eyes. And other certain details. Whereas some details will still be a little minimal. Most commonly, you'll still almost see no details to the mouth. But you'll get very detailed eyes like this. You'll see almost no details to the nose. There's a little bit more realism to mangas than there is in anime in general. And you'll get some good shading that you won't see in anime, and it's usually done in the color stage, this wouldn't actually be a black ink line, this would be just a darker area of flesh shading. Hair also gets a lot more detail in anime, mostly with the highlights, what you'll often see to give it that air of realism, are actually two layers of highlighting. No matter what color you're starting with, you'll have one layer here that is a little lighter, but then you'll have a field that is actually white. And each of which are bordered, each side of which is bordered by the medium color. Of course this is easiest in black but it's done even in blonde. You'll have a lighter yellow here, and you'll usually have some reference to it on the opposite side of the light source, usually without the white, just with the lighter color. So look for more details, more shading, and details can be in the strangest places, like I say, but other areas are still left simplified, hands are usually still not detailed whereas weird details like the zipper on a jacket will be shown. And that's your basic differences between manga style and anime style. And that's basically how you draw a manga."