How To Draw A Manga The Simple Way

Hello and welcome to the third tutorial on how to draw a manga. In the last tutorial on drawing manga, you learned how to draw a manga by creating simply stick figure poses.

In this tutorial, we will focus on filling in those stick figure drawings with simple shapes to give your manga characters more dimension.

Using Simple Shapes To Learn How To Draw A Manga

Everything around us, including our bodies are made of simple geometry shapes like cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres. Therefore, in order to learn how to draw a manga, we must first learn how to draw these simple shapes.

Drawing Exercise To Help You Understand 3-D Shapes

Here’s a quick drawing exercise to help you understand 3-D shapes and also shading.

First draw a rough sketch of a cube.

Next, tighten up the lines. Think about where the ground should be. Also imagine a light source and where it is located relative to the cube. (In the example below, the light source is coming from the top left, but you can put yours where ever you want.)

And finally, finish off by shading the cube accordingly. Make sure to make the area that is faces away from the light the darkest as it is receiving the least amount of light.

Drawing Shapes From Different Angles

Now that you understand how to draw a simple shape, let’s mix it up a little bit by drawing them from different angles.

This is very important to learning how to draw a manga because your manga characters will be in a variety of different poses. And if you want to depict them accurately, you’ll need to know how to draw the shapes from different angles.

Try drawing these objects in different positions and angles. Keep in mind the direction of the light. You will be basing your manga drawings on these shapes so by practicing them you’ll gain an accurate sense of shape, size, and volume.

Adding Shapes To Your Manga Figure Drawings

Now for the most fun part of learning how to draw a manga. It’s time to add these shapes to your manga stick figures.

Use cylinders for the arms and legs. Use spheres for the joints. And use a basic polygon for the hands and feet.

Remember, we are still in the sketching process of developing our manga character. Take it slow and step by step.

First draw the manga stick figure.

Then add in the shapes.

You don’t have to shade your manga figure but I’ve done it here to show you the contour and depth of these images. Normally, shading is save for the end, during the coloring stage.

And there you have it. Now you know how to draw a manga using basic geometric shapes. Look pretty good doesn’t it?

In our up coming manga tutorials, we will learn how to dress up these figures even more and make them look more realistic.

These manga tutorials are brought to you by Malcolm Matherson from MadAboutManga.com

If you like these free lessons and would like to learn more about drawing manga, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Malcolm’s “Mad About Manga” drawing e-course.

It is a surprisingly detail course that covers pretty much anything you’d need to know about how to draw manga.

(I was actually surprise to see how great it looks and how much it covers considering that it only cost a mere $37)

Click here to learn more about the “Mad About Manga” drawing e-course.

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