How to Draw a Manga Face - Proportion Guidelines

To draw your Manga character's face proportions correctly, first you need some guidelines. Here's how:

Find the half way point on the vertical guideline, and draw a horizontal guideline across the width of the head. This is the eye line.

Half way between the eye line and the chin, draw another horizontal line. This new line will indicate where the bottom of the nose should go.

Half way between this nose line and the chin, draw a short horizontal line. This line is the shadow below the lower lip. You draw this first because it can be difficult to draw the lip line in the proper location without much experience. When you get more comfortable with the face, you can cut straight to the lips.

How to Draw a Manga Face - Draw the Face Outline

To draw the face of your Manga character, first find the center of the circle, and draw a vertical line beginning at the top of the circle and ending below the circle by about half the circle's length. This will be the guide line for your character’s chin.

Note that older characters have longer chins and more slender faces and younger characters have shorter chins and rounded faces. From the bottom of this line you’ll want to draw two curved lines (as shown) ending at the sides of the circle.

Some Manga artists draw the chin with sharp points like that of a square at the end of the chin and base of the jaw. For now stay as curvy as possible so you can get the style down

Draw a Manga Face - How to Draw a Manga Face

This lesson will show you how to draw a Manga character face. It isn't a particular character - it's one I've made up. By following these basic principles, you can learn how to draw any Manga character's face, just changing the details to suit the character.

The head of a Manga character is by far the most important part! Why? Because the style is based around it. Everything after the head is more or less just another piece of a cartoon character, and by that I mean that for the most part, you can find everything else in other styles of cartooning and comic booking.

To begin your Manga character, first draw a circle. This will be the top of your character’s head and help shape all the later aspects of the head such as the eyes and mouth.

Draw a Manga Head in Three Quarter View - Finishing

To finish up your manga head in three-quarter view, clean up your drawing and add any finishing details. You might want to add a cleft chin or indicate the plane of the cheekbones or temple, for example. Bear in mind though, that the more lines and detail you put in the face, the older the character looks.

Draw a Manga Head -Adding the Hairline

You can go ahead and erase your guidelines so far and add a new one, the hairline. Keep in mind that you don’t see the other side of the head and therefore will not draw that part of the hairline. Then draw the neck. Draw the back of the neck as though it’s a continuation of the back of the head, as in, it curves nicely into it. The front of the neck should be pretty much straight down from the chin. Feel free to add neck details such as muscles, and for men, an Adam’s apple.

Draw a Manga Head -Placing the Eyes

In Manga drawing, placement of the eyes can be tricky - especially in 3/4 view can be tricky. I sometimes draw guidelines for myself to indicate where the pupils will go. Remember in three-quarter view that the eyes are narrower, and that the features all shift in the direction that the character is facing. The inside corner of the furthest eye is usually hidden by the bridge of the nose. The nose itself sticks out a little further, so looks wider than when viewing face-on. It is still drawn very simply.

Draw a Manga Head - Draw the Ear and Chin

Imagine the top of the head from a bird’s eye view,with a line running across the middle and down the sides of the head - almost like a set of headphones. Sketch this line, and use it to place the base of the jaw and ear as shown.

Draw the ear as a simple loop, between the eyeline and nose guideline.

Draw the jaw and chin line as a simple shallow curve beginning just above the bottom of the ear and ending at the tip of the chin. Be sure to round off the chin.

Draw a Manga Head - Draw the Face Outline

Draw the guidelines for the eyes nose and mouth. The proportions are the same as for a forward facing head, but this time, you'll need to draw them at an angle. They can be parallel or slightly in perspective. To draw the far side of the face, start by following the curve of the circle for the forehead as far as they eye line. Then curve the line outward a little to shape the cheek, then inwards and down to the chin point, with a very slight outward curve.

Draw a Manga Head - Begin Drawing a Manga Head in 3/4 View

Begin the same way you did with the head facing forward, with a circle and a vertical line. This time though, draw a curved line that begins at the top of the vertical guideline, follows the imaginary curve of the head to about the half way point, then continues straight to a point just left of the bottom of the vertical guideline. This new guideline is essentially the replacement of the vertical one and will help you place the eyes nose and mouth. (You can draw it facing right, of course, but for the time being let's work in the same direction.)

Clean, Crisp Manga Drawing

First of all, wash your hands, and consider using cotton gloves when drawing, to prevent oils from your hands getting onto the paper. Otherwise, keep a spare sheet of paper under your hand.

When using colored pencil for Manga drawing, its easy to pick up tiny specks of color from dark areas, making streaks or spots through your lighter areas. To avoid this, work from light-to-dark, doing highlights and pale skin tones first, then adding darker shades and shadows last. Use a soft brush to flick away loose particles of colored pencil.

Use the same approach when using felt pen for coloring manga, and make sure that previous layers are dry before starting on a new color, if you need to avoid blending.

Pencil lines can often be a problem, with graphite pencil smudging into colors. Use a fairly hard pencil, and draw as lightly as possible, lifting off excess graphite with an eraser. Re-do linework after you've colored the drawing. Some artists like to use a smudgeproof Indian ink to ink drawings prior to coloring.