Learning how to draw Manga?

~Skyroxis Jul 10, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Kay then.

Hai there, lemme start by saying I am pretty new to DeviantArt. I have had a DeviantArt for about 2 years, but I didn't get obsessed with it until recently, so I made a new account to start fresh.

I have always loved to doodle, but I never thought of advancing my skills. I only ever really doodled in class and stuff, and just learned from trial and error. the only classes I have taken are middle school art classes, because I don't have room in my highschool schedule to fit in an art class (Choir gives me a llof my art credits and more).

I am a huge anime fan and I love a lot of Hayao Miyazaki films. I have always wanted to have a simple style, like this:

[link]

I hate shading and coloring :l But if I do get into that sort of thing, I don't like excessive shading. It distracts me a lot when I look at a picture.

Anyways, to the question I would like to ask.

For someone who has very basic skills, where should I go to learn proportions, techniques, ect. that will help me advance to the style of drawing I wish to achieve? I have been stuck in a rut for a while. I practice on my sketch pad just about every day for an hour or two, and I am getting a tablet very soon.

Please give me advice?

-Jamie

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*Sachi-pon Jul 10, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

it's good that you practice often! eventually, you will start to see improvement!! although... it does take a long time! one thing i like to tell people is, try to relax and have fun instead of constantly stressing about how much you improve, because if you do that, it will seem like you are improving at a painfully slow rate. if you don't worry too much about it, what happens after you keep drawing for a while is that you'll look back on your old work and notice mistakes you didn't notice before!! so keep trying...

as for coloring and shading, YES you should definitely learn to color!! play around with color schemes and techniques. even with color, you can still have a simple style with minimal shading. kinda like this: [link] she's a great artist, study her works closely!!

another tip i have for you is, hold your drawings up to a mirror sometimes, during the sketching process. (or flip horizontally, with digital art) by doing this you will catch some mistakes with your anatomy and faces. then, try very carefully to think about the mistakes and fix them until they look better in the mirror. i've started doing this. it's painful, lol. but it is a must.

study your favorite artists. do some sketches in their style! a beginner artist should "copy" things here and there from their fave artists, just for practice.

learning anatomy is very hard. -___- but there are lots of art resources on the internet, for anatomy and much more! tons of tutorials on this site, and various blogs on tumblr and things like that. like this one: [link]

play around. experiment. try new tools, styles, and techniques.

the most important thing you have to know is that art is difficult and it's a long road. you have to try to relax and have fun with it, which is tough to do when you are intimidated by artists with more skill. there are many times when trying to do art is frustrating, and you want to punch something. XD you have to calm down and not let the stress of doing art get to you!! don't worry, improvement will happen!!

~Glori305 Jul 10, 2012

Start with the basics.

Get a sketchbook, and draw people. Drawing from live people, drawing from photos. Go out and draw trees, flowers and bushes. Set up a still life, and do one. Draw outfits, once again on live models and from photo's.

If shading is distracting, someone is doing it wrong more likely than not. And that is most likely from people who started with anime, and don't really understand light sources and shading. If you don't have something to suggest light shadow, your work will look too flat. I have seen this done very well with just thicker lines on one side, and thinner lines on the lighter side.

Manga is a style, and should be learned, after you have your basic skills down. This is the way actual manga/anime artist learn, they become excellent traditional artists and THEN break into the field of anime.

~shininginthedarkness Jul 10, 2012

You have to learn to shade, even if you're not going to use a lot of shading in a picture. It's not really 'shading', it's 'thinking of what you're drawing as a 3D object. If you never get the hang of representing stuff as 3D objects instead of just flat planes, the work will always look wonky and off, and you're never going to be sure why. This is as true for a cartoon as it is for an oil painting. Miyazaki's style shows a full mastery of this concept, even though it looks deceptively simple.

The fewer lines and areas of shading you have in a drawing, the more important each element becomes.

If you want to learn the human figure, draw a lot of human figures. From life if you can, from photos if you can't. Draw the whole figure, not bits and pieces, and focus more on the big picture than on the details. Expect everything to look terrible for a while. But it's also good to learn to draw other stuff that isn't people. If you just draw absolutely nothing but cartoon people on a blank background, you'll be coming back here in a year or two saying you've lost your inspiration. Learn to draw household objects, trees, buildings, animals, clouds, etc. etc. Where would manga or anime be without this stuff? No one would look at it! If you put in some time with some good fundamentals, soon you'll be able to take a crack at drawing anything that pops into your head.
(But if it pops into your head, use some reference, too. It's ok to use references)

~Skyroxis Jul 10, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Thanks for the feedback :3 It really helps a lot. Even though I am reluctant to draw anything but manga characters over and over... I'll try to draw things from sight, just because I hear it all the time and I guess it makes sense to experiment drawing other things as well.

Thanks again :3

~shininginthedarkness Jul 10, 2012

Manga is an abstraction. This means that it has realism as a basis, but parts are either left out or modified to get something simpler and well... cartoony. But without understanding the base, you'll only be able to copy how others have done this, and never really be able to do it well for yourself.

It's like going to make cupcakes, but you think making the cupcakes is boring, so you just eat the sprinkles. Ick! That's not a good dessert! They're just supposed to be sprinkled lovingly on top of a nice solid base of delicious cupcake!

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