Drawing Manga Style

Hi!

   I have been trying some manga style drawings. (just to clarify :manga- Japanese comic books; anime-Japanese movies and tv shows) I found a picture of Hiro from the original Big Hero 6 comic books and I used it to learn how to shade and add detail to cartoon looking drawings without making them too realistic.

   I decided to take this picture of Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians and turn him into a manga character! 

   I drew it with pencil first. I didn't change much about the overall head shape and contour lines in the clothes. What I did do differently was the hair and face. The eyes needed to be a lot different.

   There are tons of ways of drawing manga eyes, but I usually use a more square eye for male characters. I left some blank spaces in my eyes.

   In realistic pictures the nose doesn't usually have a contour line, it's more of a shadow. You draw it using light lines and shading. In manga drawings however, the faces don't have much detail. In this picture the darkest shadow is at the bottom of the nose, so that is the only line I drew in the picture.

   Now for the mouth. All I needed to draw for the mouth was a line and a smaller line to indicate the bottom lip.

   Manga hair is one of the funnest parts of the drawing. It's thick, often with large bangs. Of course, you don't want as many lines in a manga drawing, so I drew the most prominent lines in the original picture.

   Once I had finished the sketch, I went back over my pencil lines with a pen.Once I had traced my lines, it was time to color it! In manga drawings, there is little to no gradation in the shading. I used only three different levels of shading, shadow, highlight and medium tones. In the Hiro picture they also had some very dark black areas of shading, but I avoided those not wanting to mess it up. When I shaded the face, I left an area on the nose white for highlight.

   Here is the finished drawing!

Bible Verse:

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith;

Romans 12:6 (ESV)