These anime drawings for beginners guidelines will teach you the fundamentals of how to draw anime with an emphasis on the Japanese anime culture.

It offers advice on the approach that you can follow to create your artistic vision accurately:

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How to Start Drawing Anime

Of course, learning to draw like an artist will take years of hard work, but we'll tell you exactly where that effort should go:

A black and white sketch of an anime character
A lot of individuals are interested in sketching and drawing. One of the best ways to excel at drawing is to learn how to draw anime characters. Learning a unique style will help you develop your own (Source: Piaxabay)

Make Lighter Lines First

Draw lighter lines to begin with, and continue layering it with dark lines until you're confident that you've got the line trajectory in place. This is especially useful for designs that are vast or intricate.

You can erase lighter lines if you've made any mistakes, and they are also easier to draw (you are not required to press the pencil hardly, hence your hand isn't as tired).

If you are drawing digitally, it's always a great idea to sketch first and then make cleaner lines over it. Another practice that will help you keep your hand stable is making specific lines.

And finally, try to make your drawing as simple as possible. It's alright to scribble or draw extra lines if you have made a mistake; however, don't sketch or scribble more lines to correct your error.

If your drawing is irredeemable, you can erase the section and begin over again.

Use Guidelines

Use guidelines as training wheels to draw. For instance, if you wish to create a balanced head from the forward-facing view, you will begin with drawing a straight line in the center of the area where you want to include the face.

These guidelines will assist you in ensuring that the breadth of spanning either side of the face is equal. After that, you can draw a straight line (or numerous lines) to ensure that both ears and eyes are leveled.

Plan Your Drawing

Make a rough estimate of your proportions before you begin drawing. For example, popular anime characters usually have bigger heads than the people in reality.

The chances of making a mistake are minimized if you compare the sizes of different components or items in your picture.

How to draw anime characters? Here are some tips:

  • Begin drawing with the upper body
  • Move towards the lower body if you're drawing a human
  • Only draw the minor elements once you've completed the overall body design (e.g., facial characteristics)

It will be much easier to correct problems if you keep these things in mind.

Otherwise, if you finish drawing the head combined with the nuances of facial features, you may discover that the rest of the body does not fit in the drawing area.

At every juncture of creating a facial feature, make sure that you take proportions into account. Therefore, if you're drawing eyes, draw the exterior contour of both eyes first, followed by each iris.

Draw The Setting

Sometimes, it is better to draw around your potential end-product to understand scaling and context. The groundwork for doing this is ensuring that the visible pieces are placed correctly.

For example, you can check the spacing between both eyes by producing a lighter drawing of the other eye. Doing this will ensure that the noticeable eye is appropriately situated.

Besides, you can design the outside contour of both ears to get an idea of how much hair you'll need to cover them.

Attempt Drawing Exercises

As a novice artist, finding easy ways to practice sketching simple geometric shapes and lines can be really beneficial.

Such exercises help you keep your hand stable and teach you how to spot (and avoid) typical blunders.

The sketching exercises can also be combined. For example:

  • Create a square
  • Draw lines from corner to corner inside it
  • Draw two additional lines through the crossing point of the original lines
  • Draw a circle in the first square

This will help you visualize how the process of drawing an anime character's head can be fragmented into simple shapes.

Other portions of the upper body and numerous other objects can often be created in the same way.

You don't have to draw the entire structure every time, but it's a great example of why starting with learning to sketch fundamental shapes is so important.

Study Anime Characters' Style

To create art that resembles popular anime characters, you must first comprehend their distinguishing qualities. There are also several online tutorials to assist you in learning these techniques.

Simply Google' Anime Drawing Tutorials' and choose whatever you want to draw. But, of course, this is not the best way to learn for those who want to draw like professionals.

Those individuals should look for private tutors instead!

Check for Errors

Hold your drawing in the opposite direction or in front of the mirror if you're having problems recognizing your flaws.

This will offer you a new 'perspective' on them, giving you a pseudo-second opinion.

If you've never heard of perspective drawing before, this may appear to be a lot of knowledge to process, but don't be intimidated.

Drawing in perspective isn't difficult. You may have drawn things in perspective without even realizing it, especially if you've been sketching for a time.

To put it simply, objects farther away appear smaller than objects closer to the spectator. Therefore, the precise application of perspective in art is critical because it can provide depth and volume to a flat image.

Now that you have a basic understanding of how perspective works, you may use it to your advantage in your artwork.

But if you want even information on how perspective can be applied when drawing famous anime characters, read on:

An anime character in front of a green board
Some of the more famous anime characters are have dedicated fan followings all over the globe, and their drawings and sketches are can often be seen on online forums and Reddit pages (Source: Pixabay)

Perspective Drawing's Use In Anime

Perspective drawing can be noticed in many mangas; it's even used to create some of the most famous anime characters.

However, to draw a good sketch of a room, you must have a strong understanding of perspective. Even if you aren't particularly fond of anime but simply enjoy sketching, this might be quite useful.

When rooms, furniture, towns, highways, buildings, and even people are portrayed in proper perspective, they look much nicer.

A straightforward example of perspective in anime would be a figure in the front shown to be larger than a character in the background.

You can use it to quickly get a general sense of how big a character should be when standing in the foreground versus standing in the background (or vice versa).

  • Draw a vertical line the same height as the character you want to project
  • Draw perspective lines from the vanishing point that touches the top and bottom of the height line
  • A second vertical line should be drawn between the identical perspective lines in the foreground and background of the initial character drawing
  • Draw your character between the horizontal lines drawn from the second height line to any point in the picture

Furthermore, suppose you want to estimate the size of a character in a position beside the one you're projecting from:

  • Make a rough outline of the character in the same place first
  • Draw them in a new position depending on the proportions of the initial location

Another example would be a punch that appears to be in your face. This can be accomplished by creating a fist that is substantially larger than the rest of the character's body parts.

Hold your palm up to your face if you want to see an accurate illustration of this. Due to perspective, it appears to be much larger than other objects.

How many different color combinations are applied to an anime-style character? Here is a description of what you should consider:

A black-haired female anime character sitting on a chair
A significant percentage of people are inclined towards drawing anime characters and want to excel at this art. The internet has great samples of anime drawings for beginners; these can help you level up your skills (Source: Unsplash)
  • Color Intensity: The brightness of a color is measured by its color intensity. Tints, hues, and tones have an impact on it
  • Achromatic: White, black, and grey are pure achromatic "colors." But these colors also consist of browns, tans, very pale, or darker colors
  • Monochromatic: Monochromatic refers to a single color. It is a mixture of blue and red with some black and white tones to create distinct variants of pink, in this case
  • Analogous: These are shades that are exactly opposite each other on the color wheel. Analogous colors produce a low-contrast, low-key effect
  • Triadic: On the color wheel, these colors will create a triangle. You can choose any three colors if the space between them remains the same
  • Warm: Red, yellow, and orange are examples of warm hues – colors that are linked with heat, such as the fire or sun. This color palette is very suitable for fantasy characters or science fiction characters
  • Cool: Purple, blue, and greenish colors are cool hues. They're the kinds of colors you'd expect to see in frigid things like snow and ice. A cold color combination also works well for science fiction and fantasy characters

Become an Expert at Drawing Anime Art With the Help of a Professional

The guidelines and advice mentioned above will assist you in learning the fundamentals of anime art.

Remember, you can go to more sophisticated areas of drawing if you possess a pretty steady hand and decent control of your pen or pencil.

If you are on the lookout for the best guides and tutors to help you draw popular anime characters, look no further than Superprof!

Superprof connects instructors and students from all parts of the world. All you have to do is make a profile and add your details.

Look for an anime drawing instructor in your area and start your own series today!

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Maria Rodriguez

Online contact creator for Superprof. I am passionate about coffee, blogging, and exchanging ideas through online mediums.