How to draw manga faces

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The Ball of Motion

When drawing a head, sometimes it’s easy to just always draw a front view. But that’s boring and everyone does that starting out. Imagine the head like a ball and imagine a line going across where the eyes should be. Now rotate that ball around and use the line to give your characters dynamic head angles.

You don’t even need to follow a rigid formula and confine yourself to the guidelines. What’s important is conveying motion and the lines are there to guide you. 

Manga Profile View

Profile views are pretty tough to get right. Here are some common mistakes that new artists make and how to look out for them.

How to age your character’s manga face

Too often we just draw characters around the same age all the time, the young teenage type. But then all your characters will look exactly the same and you’ll be drawing a 10 year old or a 20 year old guy like they are 15. That’s bad!

 

Manga Head Proportions

The way we get better at drawing and polishing our skill is by practicing. We practice to catch our mistakes and eventually correct them. So instead of a step by step of how to draw a manga head, here is a list of common mistakes you should look for.

1. Do the eyes sit evenly on a line? After you draw the eyes, draw a line at the top and the bottom and see if they line up.
2. Is the chin centered between the eyes? Draw a line down the center of the face between the eyes and make sure the chin is on that line. The nose shouldn’t be too far from the line and mouth should be in the middle of this line.
3. Are the ears aligned with the eyes? This depends on the angle of the face, but the line which the eyes sit on is a good guide to where the ears should fall. The earlobe should fall at the bottom line.
4. Are the cheeks under the eyes? No matter what age the character is or how high up the eyes are, there needs to be a cheek bone and it should fall just under the eyes before you start drawing that line to the chin.

Avoid Similar Features

Anime and Manga is often accused of being generic. Make sure your characters have distinguishing features. Don’t rely on different color eyes and hair to make them different. Take away the hair of your characters and ask yourself if they are still recognizable.